Дуэйн Диана

The Big Meow

3. THE BIG MEOW

Chapter One

Four-thirty on a Sunday morning is about the closest the City that Never Sleeps ever gets to dozing off. Midtown Manhattan, in particular, is quieter then than at almost any other time except when it’s snowed. But there was little chance of that happening today. It was the third of June, and though New York’s wizards can do unusual things with their weather when the need arises, right now the busiest group of them had far more important business on their minds.

The light at the corner of Eighth Avenue and West Thirty-first Street changed from red to green, without any other visible result: no cars were waiting to move on either side of the intersection. In fact, nothing at all could be seen between Eighth and the River but various parked cars– not a single pedestrian, not even a stray dog. The only thing moving down that way, down at the far end of Thirty-first, was the Hudson River – seeming to slide slowly with the inward tide from the Great South Bay just now swinging, and the surface of the water gone the color and texture of tarnished beaten pewter in the predawn twilight.

Sitting at the corner of Eighth and Thirty-first, watching the river, watching the paling sky, was a small black cat. To human observers, city cats often look furtive or nervous: but this one sat there like she owned the street. This morning, she did. The most senior worldgating technician on the East Coast of North America let out a long breath and turned her attention away from the placid slow roll of the river, looking uptown along Eighth.

The brash blue-white glare of the spots and the sheets of matte-mirror Mylar up there made Rhiow blink once again. Up at the Thirty-fourth end of the block, the intersection of the two big multi-lane streets was cordoned off with metal parade railings and pre-incident tape. Inside the cordon, and outside, many ehhif (or humans, as they called themselves) ran about doing inexplicable things with cables and props and big chunky pieces of equipment…or seeming to. Outside the cordon, endless more thick black cables ran into the cordoned area from many high-sided plain white trucks parked all around the “shooting” area, up and down Eighth Avenue and into side streets made shadowy by contrast with the fierce lights at the intersection. Off to one side, leaning against one of the corner buildings, was the lone, stay-up-all-night, club-buzzed rep from the Mayor’s-office Film Board people, half asleep…which was all to the best, as it decreased to near-zero the chance that she might possibly recognize for what it was the quite extensive wizardry taking place right under her nose.

They had spent the better part of an hour, now, setting up the“shot.” The poor Film Board lady leaned in her dark blue autumn-season car coat – for the mornings had been cool – against the corner of the office building at the corner of Eighth and Thirty-second, blinking and bleary, without the slightest idea of what the “director” and the “producer” and all the “crew” were agitating about: the thing that was apparently not quite right, not quite ready. Ehhif ran back and forth with clipboards, consulted with one another, or seemed to consult; dragged cables around, repositioned cameras and wheeled carts full of computer equipment…or what looked like cameras and carts and equipment.

Rhiow, watching this performance from down the road, put her whiskers forward in amusement. Well? she said to Urruah. When?

About two minutes. You know how unpredictable these things are when you cut them loose.

We both know. You’re just disappointed there are no oh’ra singers in the area.

An annoyed hiss came down the connection to her. Urruah spent a lot of time hanging around with the backstage toms over at the Met, and had recently been torn between anguish and a sort of perverse delight when a great and seriously overweight Italian tenor had become involved in an incident involving a malfunctioning worldgate and a large number of giant saurians. His protests at having to patch that portion of reality so that an oversized terror lizard had not eaten the tenor in question were specious…but not as much so as they might have been, as from a Person-tom’s point of view, the tenor in question was in himself a whole vast sheaf of wasted opportunities. No tom could really understand how you could do anything to yourself (like get fat) that made you potentially less of a singer, andpotentially less popular with the shes.

Later for that, was all Urruah said: and Rhiow put her whiskers even further forward at his tone, for he was a professional, that one, through and through. When there was a wizardry in hand, nothing could put him off the hunt until what he wanted was in his claws. After that, it would be all food, song and queens: but not a moment sooner.

One minute now. Is he in place? she heard Urruah say to someone else in the connection.

Ready to go, said an excited younger voice. He wants to know, isn’t he supposed to eat something?

Oh, come on, he read the script breakdown with the rest of us! Rhiow said. He knows what he’s supposed to do.

But he says dawn makes him hungry…!

Oh sweet Iau in a trashcan, Rhiow thought. Arhu, she said“aloud”, tell your buddy — excuse me; tell my honored Elder Brother the most excellent World-Senior for the Downside Ophidians — that he should have eaten before he left. And tell him not to get confused! It’s only wizards here, right now, and the cops and the Film Board lady. But if somestreet person or clubber coming home wanders in and he gets into his part too much, he could have to disgorge suddenly.

There was a moment’s silence. Seconded to her through Arhu’s mind came the voice: If that happens, you shall take me to the deli afterwards to compensate, and there shall be a great deal of pastrami bestowed upon me.

And a great deal of hot sauce, Arhu said.

Rhiow let out a long, long breath. If there had been corruption going on among the wizards under her supervision, these last few weeks, it’d have been Urruah’s fault. Ethnic food, popular culture, ffhilm– that strange twenty-four-frames-per-second artform so beloved of human beings – all these things had been dragged into the present project by Rhiow’s senior project engineer; and Rhiow had been torn between disciplining him, which could have been problematic, and letting him get the job done without destroying half of Manhattan.

Discipline later, she thought. Urruah, she thought, tell your prot?g?s to shut up and concentrate. They can both have a whole cow’s worth of pastrami later if this goes according to plan. Time check…

Forty seconds.

Rhiow sat there on the corner, breathed in, breathed out. From behind her, away across the island and across the East River, the light of a clear New York dawn grew slowly; ice-blue and haze-blurred up high, soft as cold water on the eyes, the peach of the eastern side of the sky starting only slowly to show across the Hudson’s sliding sheen. Few other eyes were turned that way. Indeed, humans were almost entirely absent from this scenario…this being why she and her team had chosen it.

“Her team”, of course, being a relative term. The arguments about the logistics alone of the worldgate move had seemed to go on for ages. “Why bother moving the thing at all?” the most senior of the Penn techs had demanded. That was Jath, always contentious, never happy to say “yes” at any moment when he could find an excuse to say “no”. Spending time around him always made Rhiow think that, on the off chance it might improve his mood, maybe there was something to the ehhif drive to get all stray toms neutered. Terrible thought, shame on me… “Rhiow, seriously, why should we bother? The ehhif have just spent umpty billion dollars on improving the miserable poor Penn they’ve got: Amtrak won’t move its stock over there after this. Nobody’s going to be running any significant rail stock over into that building except New Jersey Transit. Why are we being so traditionalist about this? The gates belong in the major railhead on this side of the Island. That means the Penn we’ve got now. Not this Moynihan thing, it’s a nice idea, they mean well, but the gates are rooted on this side, you know how gates are when they get used to the way things have been for a long time…”

It’s not just gates, Rhiow had thought, and then put her ears back just a little: for she’d heard this argument once every three days since the present project had started to become a reality. Jath’s father had been a gate tech, as he would tell you endlessly, and so had his father and his father and his father before him: and when they’d been running things and the old Penn station had been here…. And off he would go, singing the same old song — and Urruah, dear staid Urruah, had finally lost his temper two weeks ago and sat down and actually started washing his sth’uw at Ffrihh during one of these perorations. There had been the inevitable reaction – a lot of hissing and tom-posturing, and very nearly some ears shredded, for Urruah was getting tired of having it thrown into his whiskers that he somehow had been allowed to work with the premier worldgates in New York, thecomplex that had the most senior area primacy, and nonetheless lived in a Dumpster – as if the two states of existence were somehow mutually exclusive.

Rhiow had finally managed to calm the wrangle down, for even Jath had had to admit that there was no point in trying to derail the project at this late date. The Powers that Be had approved it, the most senior wizards working in North America had already put their pawprints on Rhiow’s master timetable, and the concrete parts of the plan now had to be allowed to go forward before the ehhif builders and architects put any more of the new Penn Station in place. There was already too much infrastructure underground that could interfere with the hyperstring structure of the gate-sheaf when it was being moved; that had been the thinking behind Urruah’s solution from the start…

Jath, she said silently, how is it down there? Are you ready?

I don’t know, the answer came back, sounding dubious as always. It looks kind of frayed around the edges: I’m not sure the string structure is going to wind in tightly enough for what we’re planning. I’m thinking we shouldn’t let it up until we have a little more time to assess the power superstructure –

The superstructure is fine, came another voice, younger and sounding extremely impatient. Rhiow let out another breath, as the speaker had good reason. It’s just as fine as it was yesterday when you pronounced it fine, and the day before that. Just get on with it, Jath!

Siff’hah, Rhiow said. She tried not to sound too stern, because she agreed with what the youngster was saying: but at the same time, she needed her to be a little less forthright just now with a wizard who was very much her senior, and whose nerves were in worse shreds than anyone else’s. Hw’aa, she said to Jath’s most senior colleague, how’s it seem to you?

Stable enough, Hw’aa said. Even though he was older than Jath, Hw’aa had for some time now been the counterbalance in the Penn team to Jath’s conservatism; there were few new things that Hw’aa wasn’t willing to try. We’re ready to pull the gate’s roots up. Twenty seconds…

Good. Hunt’s luck to you, cousin –

Luck to you too, Rhiow.

She looked down the street to where the ehhif had mostly stopped running around, and where crowds of people were standing off to the sides of the street now, as if getting ready to see a shot start. Rhiow watched this almost absently, just being glad for the moment that Hw’aa was on site to keep Jath focused and reassured, and that she was herself dealing well enough with the tension not to get caught up in another team’s infighting. My own team’s infighting is bad enough… And there was always the temptation to simply win any given fight by throwing her weight around in her position as the most senior technician working this particular part of the world. But Rhiow knew better. I will meet idiots today, went one version of her after-waking meditation, and one of them will probably be me. Iau Hau’hai, Queen of Life and of Making Things Work, grant me of Your courtesy the courage to shred that idiot’s ears when I meet her, and then get on with work…for being right is nothing next to having things be right…

Fifteen seconds. Want oversight? said Urruah’s more voice in her ear.

“Just a quick look,” Rhiow said. “As long as you’re sure you can spare me the concentration – ”

No problem. Everyone knows what to do. I’m just making sure the timetable goes off by the numbers, now…

And overlaid on the slowly brightening morning around her, she got a glimpse of the darkness under the streets– the track-cavern at the “old Penn” end, the west portal of the old North River tracks, and the bright stringing of the structure of the “ganged” Penn Station worldgate – two gates combined for the moment into one – shining in the darkness where it hung over the steel of the rails. These would be the gate complex’s last few moments in its old position, parked at the end of northern platform of Penn’s Track Twenty. Now the worldgate blazed unnaturally bright in that dark air, an irregularly-shaped, rippling warp and weft of blue and green and golden threads of light, pulled for the moment into full real-world visibility, its diagnostic mode. On one side of it, Jath, and Hw’aa on the other, were reared up with claws and teeth sunk into the gateweave, pulling the gate into the right configuration for the dangerous work that was going to follow. At least there were no trains due down those tracks for another forty minutes: the ehhifs’ Sunday schedule had left the joint worldgating teams some time to troubleshoot anything that might go wrong with the separation of the gate from its power sources, rooted down into the ancient Manhattan of the Downside. But it wasn’t the separation itself that was most of the problem. It was keeping the gate live while it was cut away from its roots, and then moving it without damaging anything else, or itself –

Five. Four. Hw’aa, let it go. Jath, claws out – !

Hw’aa threw his brown tabby-striped self backwards, letting go the strings he’d been holding apart. As he did, gray Jath swept his claws through the near-invisible catenary strings that were all that now remained of the worldgate’s connection to the main power structures in the Downside, severing them. The gate-weft collapsed in on itself in midair, burning in a bright and alarmed-looking jumble of colors – wavering and wobbling in even Urruah’s view as the structure of space bent and twisted slightly around the deranging gate. Off to one side, a small Person-shape began to glow bright where she sat, white patches blazing, even the dark ones seeming to acquire extra depth, a darkness with power moving underneath it: and a shell of the same dark-and-light-patched fire appeared out of the air and clamped itself down around the collapsing, contracting ball of burning hyperstrings –

Busy now, Urruah said, and the imagery vanished. Rhiow looked down the street and saw a tall dark-haired ehhif in a parka and baseball cap and headphones nodding as he picked up the cue. He looked into his“camera” and gestured at another ehhif. “Lights!”

All the film lights surrounding the cordoned-off intersection burst into full ferocious fire, painting the buildings all around with long black equipment-shadows.

“Speed!” the ehhif in the parka shouted.

“Got speed!” the answer came back from somewhere among the crew.

A young ehhif boy held up an electronic clapper-board, snapped it shut for the sync: the red numbers on it started racing, and someone else yelled,“Blue Harvest, take one, scene sixty-five – action!”

A hubbub of thought broke out underground among the members of the amalgamated gate-tech teams. It was difficult for even Rhiow, well used to this chatter from their numerous rehearsals, to make sense of more than a scrap of thought here or there. Is it cohering? Watch out for the secondary root– no, not like that – over here, over here! – okay, there we go, here comes the backlash. Too much expansion? No, wait — !

And up on the street, something unusual began to occur. A fizzle and stutter of a new light, like lightning, painted the buildings further up Eighth Avenue with a sudden multicolored glare. A great rumble, like an incoming subway train, but much, much bigger, shook the whole area.

There were not many people who actually lived in this neighborhood, which was probably as well. Rhiow looked up around her and was clear that any of the residents, if they were even conscious right now, would simply think that the one of the many subway lines under Penn was making an unusual amount of noise this morning…probably something to do with the construction in the new Penn building, which had been going on for months and was famously noisy. It was a mistake that Rhiow would have been happy to encourage. But after the rumble came something that even on quite a bad day could not have been attributed to subway trouble.

Down Eighth Avenue, several storeys above the sidewalk, a huge head peered around the corner of Thirty-fourth Street. Only a very alert observer would have been able to see that the terrible face– fanged, scaled, dramatically striped in blood-crimson and gold, the wicked eye glinting with a burning gold of its own — somehow looked a little uncertain. But then the face recovered its composure. Down in the street, several of the waiting cameras pushed in on it.

The huge jaws opened, revealing fangs like mighty knives. A roar issued forth from that gigantic maw, belling an awful challenge. Windows rattled for blocks up and down Eighth. The cops standing around the“director” goggled, impressed against their will, as the dinosaur – bigger than any Godzilla or Gorgo, impossibly large – came striding out into the intersection of Eighth and Thirty-fourth, its clawed forelegs working, its long tail swept out behind it for balance.

Behind the“dinosaur” came a herd of his people – all smaller far than he: but then the Father of his People could afford the power to manifest himself in a variation of the form that had once destroyed the Lone Power that was gnawing at the roots of the feline world. Now that outrageous and gigantic form, and about fifty smaller “dinosaurs”, came rampaging down Eighth. The ground shook as they came. The cops stood there shaking their heads, impressed: the Film Board lady, in the middle of texting somebody on her mobile, stopped to stare, her mouth hanging open. The greatest dinosaur stopped about halfway down the block, directly between the Felt Forum and Madison Square Garden and the Post Office building, then put his tail briefly down and let out one magnificent roar that once again rattled all the plateglass for hundreds of meters around like a Space Shuttle landing – a histrionic and ferocious ophidian shout of defiance.

And slowly, up through the street, the Sun rose.

Or at least it seemed to. One of the many wizards managing secondary support for this operation had spoken the Mason’s Word to the street, adding one of the Word’s subroutines that affected metals as well as stone and stone derivatives. So, untroubled by the tangle of cable and piping that underlay every New York street, through the concrete and the much-patched asphalt, the sheen and burn of tightly wrappedhyperstrings rode up into the still predawn air. The biggest dinosaur, reacting to the growing light and the new shadow cast from his tremendous bulk, looked over his shoulder at the rising, burning fury, turned, roared his own defiance, and made toward the ball of fire.

He reached out claws to it, sank them in deep, grappled with the great burning shape, and staggered back, striving and wrestling with the burden of it…lurching and stumbling with it backwards, down Eighth, toward Rhiow…and toward exactly the spot where they wanted it to go. Rhiow’s tail began to lash, for this was not a moment for Ith, or Urruah, or Arhu or Siff’hah, to lose their grip on the worldgates. Yet for the moment everything seemed to be working, and things could have gone so much worse if they’d tried to conduct this business underground. The complications of pushing this great deadly ball of energy along an entirely underground route, through meter after meter of ehhif high-tension power conduits and cable guides and pipes and tubes and steam ducts, would have been huge. But it had all become completely unnecessary, one afternoon, when in the midst of yet another too-contentious meeting down underneath Penn, Urruah’s voice spoke up and said, entirely reasonably, “Why should we drive ourselves insane? Why bother hiding the move from the ehhif at all? Hide it in plain sight.”

It had seemed like such an insane concept at first. But even Jath, hard though he’d resisted it, had been won around to the quirky logic of it. And then the other wizards with whom the plan had had to be cleared had accepted it enthusiastically. Is it just that it’s so odd? Rhiow had thought at the time. Whatever the reason, here they all were, ehhif-wizards and People-wizards all together: and here was the whole Penn worldgate complex wrapped into one tightly-wound package. It was trying to unravel itself, but being prevented from doing so by Siff’hah as the spell’s power source, floating along invisibly beside it so as not to have to be distracted by the need towaste concentration on walking. The whole ball of yarn, as it were, was now apparently rolling down toward Rhiow, dominating the street and getting bigger by the moment, bearing down on the dinosaurs clustered around their gigantic chief, who looked to be losing his wrestling match. And right down at the bottom of it all, invisible to all eyes except feline ones, there was a single tiny, tabby-striped figure with his back to Rhiow, pulling the worldgate complex down Eighth Avenue….with his teeth.

The fur stood up all over Rhiow as she watched him, hearing Urruah babbling at her again, late one morning two months ago, as he walked home with her.“I would never have thought of it! I saw it on this ehhif thing on cable late one night, and the image just wouldn’t let me be, and I – ”

“Cable?” Rhiow had shaken her head as if all the fleas apparently living inside Urruah’s head were now trying to roost in her ears. “Your Dumpster has cable, all of a sudden?”

He gave her a look that said most eloquently how he was ignoring her attempts to derail his train of thought.“It was one of those big bull ehhif, all teeth and no brains, and he was pulling along one of those big trucks, they call them semih’s, and he was doing it with his teeth – ”

He was all teeth and no brains? Rhiow wanted to shout. She restrained herself for the moment, and paused in front of a dry-cleaners’ shop to wash an ear that didn’t need it. “Urruah,” Rhiow said, “if you saw an ehhif jump off a bridge, would you do that too? You and your ‘popular culture,’ whatever that is, I swear, because it changes every time you try to define it – ”

“It’s something you don’t get enough of, that’s for sure. Otherwise you would have had this great idea first. Anyway, the cable’s backstage at the Met; the scene guys have to have something to watch while the oh’ra singers are actually singing. So here he is, this ehhif, in one of thesestrong-ehhif contests they have, where they lift rocks and throw trees around and Iau knows what all else, it’s hysterical to watch them.”

Hysterical, that’s going to be me in a minute, Rhiow thought, as Urruah went on to describe the strange pulling device which had been built for this ehhif to use – something to sink his teeth into and pull this semih’ the necessary distance. Yet all against her will she’d begun to see how similar his idea was to some of the handling constructions that a gate tech might build to deal with the most recalcitrant gating structures, old ones that were getting likely to shred themselves to bits if you moved them. All right, this was a brute-force kind of solution, completely unlike the more elegant and finicky kind of strategy that her old colleague Saash would have come up with. But Saash was somewhere else at the moment, helping Iau steer the stars in their courses, no doubt; and who knew whether, if you handed her a whole star or a whole gating complex to manhandle around, even she mightn’t havesaid “the hell with the claws” and used her teeth instead? Maybe it’s time I got past my preconceptions about Urruah’s potential as a gate tech, Rhiow thought. All right, it’s just such a tom-sounding way to deal with something, but if it works…

And now here she was watching this terrible rolled-up ball of fire come trundling down Eighth Avenue, while a huge and magnificent dinosaur struggled futilely with it. Rhiow sat there commanding her fur to lie down, and prayed, prayed to Iau the Queen of Everything that Urruah had not misjudged how much energy was required in his own version of the pulling device to keep that terrible thing under control. For that was part of a typical tom’s solution, too: bluff. But you did not bluff a worldgate…or at least you didn’t try bluffing it more than once. And as for a gate that you’d purposely cut loose of its moorings –

The huge glowing ball rolled on. That was not a special effect or an illusion. Urruah’s “puller” was not fastened to the gate sheaf itself, but to the massive shielding construct that had been erected around it and which Siff’hah was powering. And atop the worldgate-bundle proper, the team’s other tom – not to be in any way outdone by his more senior colleague – was riding the top of that ball of force, walking backwards on it as it rolled forwards. That was one piece of popular culture Rhiow had come in contact with one night at her own ehhif’s place: the image of some poor tiger in a forced performance of some kind, walking backwards on a big ball, while a strangely dressed ehhif flicked a whip at it, and music played and crowds cheered. And there was Arhu up there, as nearly invisible against the blaze of energies under him as Urruah was below, at least two paws in contact with that shield all the time, ready to sink his own teeth into it if he neededto. Siff’hah, though, seemed to need very little in the way of help. Power simply streamed off her into the wizardry. That was her business, and she was good at it: sometimes a little too good for Rhiow’s nerves. But as so young a wizard, she was always going to have more power available to herthan the more senior practitioners.

Here we go, said Arhu, as Ith, wrestling with the ball, came up even with the corner of Thirty-first. Down that street, half a block behind the Post Office, was the place where the tracks running under the building and into Penn were exposed to the open air, a great wide pit half a block wide. Sif?

Ready, Siff’hah said.

Ready, said Ith.

Lightning crackled fiercely away from the moving ball of gate-strings, lashing out at the dinosaur who struggled with it. He squealed in rage and staggered back, the earth shaking under him. Then once more he rushed at the globe of strung fire, and once more was repulsed. The dinosaur shrieked renewed fury, attacked one last time: but this time the lightning that burst from the globe of fire was so violent that the king-dinosaur staggered back again, turned, and began an enraged flight down Thirty-first Street, off to Rhiow’s left. The other dinosaurs, which had been milling around their leader, now broke away and began to flee down the side streets, vanishing from the shot and from sight.

Rhiow watched the lightning with admiration. This was probably the only real“special effect” in the whole production: it was the result of purposeful overfeeding of the worldgates’ shield layer on Siff’hah’s part, and was done merely for show, to support the backstory in the script which the New York Film Board had approved. Jath was acting as supervisor for thiseffect, making sure that it didn’t get out of hand. But that was mostly what Jath was good for: at keeping things from happening. It was not anything Rhiow would ever have admitted to him, of course, but it was true. The real master of this whole business was down there at the far end of the street, behind the dinosaurs, with his teeth sunk in the “puller,” still advancing toward her, backwards, steady and slow. Urruah, Rhiow said, what’s the word?

Ready for the turn, Urruah said silently.

Is the socket ready! Rhiow said.

All set, said a new voice: Fh’iss. He was the third of Jath’s team, and had been set completely aside from the “moving” part of the project to concentrate on the business of stopping it from moving at the end of the run. An elaborately constructed socket lay waiting off to one side of the New Jersey Transit tracks, near a freight platform. It was a temporary home for the gate, only shallowly rooted into the subterranean master catenary: there would be time for short-distance repositioning later. Drop it on me, Fh’iss said.

All right, Rhiow said. Here comes the drama. Arhu? Siff’hah? You ready?

Ready to go, Arhu said; but how would it not be, when I’ve been handling things? From the sound of him, you’d think that nothing particularly interesting had been happening. Rhiow put her whiskers forward in amusement. For a kitten barely a year old, who’d been pulled out of a garbage bag floating down the East River, where he and his sibs had been thrown to drown, coolness had become his middle name.

Oh really, said his sister, endlessly unimpressed. But then, Rhiow thought, she had been in that bag too. She had come from a tremendous distance in miles, and had spent the beginning of a new life, in order to hunt her brother down and shred his ears– that being the best way she had of telling him she loved him. Where would you be without me to remind you of what needs doing? And look out, you’re steering it crooked.

I am not.

You are.

Am not– !

I’m going to turn now, Urruah said, so it would be really smart if you two went with me, and didn’t fall off and let this thing blow up and eat half the island! Ith –

Ready.

Slowly, the lightnings crackling around it again, the huge ball of worldgate-fire negotiated the turn into West Thirty-first. Ith,“enraged”, rushed at the worldgate-core one last time, apparently trying to grapple with it, but flailed away again by the crackling violence of the fire. Then the ball of fire seemed to speed up slightly, bumping into Ith, making him stagger, off balance, toward the edge of the great track-pit. Fh’iss?

Ready. Not on top of me, cousin!

Not? Ith said, sounding surprised. But I thought in the script it said– Theatrically he leaned backward over, clawed forelegs flailing, tail lashing for balance, finding it, losing it again. He toppled.

Ith, really, not!

Ith fell backwards, grasping at the ball of fire, sinking his claws into it in one last desperate“attempt” to keep himself from falling. The attempt failed. Giant rear legs kicking, he went over the edge in a tremendous fall. A disastrous roar went up, a bleat of terror and rage, as he clutched the worldgate-ball to him and plunged into the pit. Like a star falling, like the Sun setting, he and the worldgate vanished from view.

There was a huge moment of silence, followed by an almighty crash.

And then the light went out.

The echoes faded. Everybody, Rhiow included, looked intently at the“director”, who was staring at one of the video displays. Then he lifted his hand.

“Cut it!” he yelled. “That’s it, that’s a wrap! Thank you, everybody! Nice work, cousins!”

Applause broke out all around, from the film crew and even from the cops, who until now had probably thought they’d seen just about everything that could happen in the way of a shooting. The special effects would be the talk of the NYPD for days, Rhiow thought: two or three days, anyway. As people started picking things up and carrying them around, Rhiow went padding over to the “director”, who was drinking what was probably his tenth paper cup of a coffee locally famous for its strength and foulness.

“Har’lh,” Rhiow said to Carl Romeo, one of the ehhif Area Seniors, “that stuff will ruin your health.”

“Only if I overdo it,” Carl said. He glanced around him, where the large team of wizards were already beginning to pack up the shot. Equipment was seeming to go into those white high-side trucks, where the cops – having recovered their original bored and jaded attitudes – and the dozy Film Board lady, were completely failing to notice that the equipment, once out of sight behind some genuine boxes and coverings, simply vanished. In the Holland and Midtown tunnels, out of sight of the security cameras – those that had not been spoofed with pre-laid wizardries already – the trucks would soon do the same. “We’ll be out of here in about twenty minutes. Nice work, Rhi.”

She shook her head.“I never touched a string,” she said. “I just coordinate.”

“Not as easy as it sounds,” Carl said, finishing the coffee and then tossing the cup into a nearby recycling bin, which another wizard picked up and carried off a second later. “My people have a saying about herding cats…”

She put her whiskers forward, knowing a compliment when she heard one. From behind the two of them, a huge-toothed head, zebra-striped in vivid red and yellow, but now reduced to its more normal three-foot length, pushed in to peer at the video display.“Did I look good?” Ith said. “I think I looked good.”

Carl chuckled.“Tim,” he said, elbowing the young ehhif wizard standing beside him, “roll the ‘video’, will you, and satisfy our Elder Brother’s vast bloated ego….?”

Rhiow put one ear back, sarcastic, as from behind Har’lh, Urruah came walking up Eighth. “And as for you,” she said to Ith, as the imagery which had just transpired started to repeat itself on the screen while he peered at it, “shouldn’t you be sidled? If enough people here see you for very much longer, we’re going to have a lot more explaining to do.”

“This is New York,” said Ith, turning one of those wise little eyes on Rhiow: it glittered with humor. “If anyone does see a red and yellow Tyrannosaur walk down the street without a film crew, they will either ignore me – being New Yorkers – or assume I am some kind of advertisement.” He shrugged his long tail, looking back at the screen. “What should I advertise, do you think?”

Arhu walked up Ith’s back and sat on his shoulder, looking over it at the video. “Pastrami,” he said.

Rhiow gave Ith a clout in the leg with her claws in; though frankly he was unlikely to have felt every claw she had, through that thick hide.“See now, you’re teaching these kits bad habits,” she said.

“I’d say it’s going both ways,” Carl said, as Siff’hah walked up Ith’s tail to join her twin on Ith’s other shoulder. “Nice work, you two.” He unzipped his parka a little: the air was warming a little as the breeze started to run down Thirty-first from the East River side, the first touch of Sun on the river pushing the air their way. “And you, Urruah: you should be pleased. An elegant solution to a thorny problem. You go ahead, Rhi, ’Ruah: your folks did all the hard work here. Leave the cleanup to us.” He turned his back on her, clapping his hands. “Come on, people, let’s go, pack out the trash…”

Rhiow waved her tail in satisfaction, turning to Urruah.“Is it down and secure? Is it rooted?”

It’s down, Fh’iss said, from down in the track pit. Our overacting cousin delivered it right on target: it fell straight into the socket, and he fell clear. Not that I won’t shred his puny ears later. ‘Not!’

“It’s not rooted in tight yet, though,” Urruah said, sitting down with his tail now weaving slowly from side to side, the thing he always did when he was ticking off items on his internal to-do list. “I want to check out the catenary junctures. If there are any frayed hyperstrings in there left over from moving the sheaf, they’ll play merry hell with the restart synch when we initiate the sequence.”

“Oh, come on,” Arhu said, “you know it’s okay, let’s just blow this thing and go home!”

Urruah turned toward Rhiow, out of Arhu’s view, before rolling his eyes. The look in them, though tired, said plainly to Rhiow, Please shut him down so I don’t have to. I can’t cope with any more right now.

“Something’s making my whiskers twinge a little,” Rhiow said, looking down toward the track-pit where the gate-sheaf was presently resting. The “what” of it, of course, was Arhu, but she didn’t have to tell anyone that. “I’ll wait and have a look myself.”

“Aww, Rhi, come on, you know it’s fine!”

She got up, stretched fore and aft, and gave him a sidewise look. Arhu wasn’t yet nearly well-enough worked in with his team and his team leader to do the smart thing and avert his eyes immediately: he actually spent a second’s worth of staring at Rhiow before having the sense to look away.

“I’m not convinced,” she said. “But for your sins, you get to come down and convince me yourself. Line by line of the spell, and string by string of the gate. No, ‘Ruah, you stay up here and have a wash. A long night’s work you’ve had, and a long month’s work before that: you deserve a moment’s rest. And it’s your team leader’s pleasure, when she’s done with this wet-eared wiseass, to walk you home and see you eat pastrami before day’s Eye comes up. As for you,” she said to Arhu, “come on down here, O endlessly knowledgeable one, and enlighten me as to the statusof my gate.”

Urruah turned away without comment, sat down and started washing, in silent hilarity: composure-washing at one remove, not for himself but for the kit. Arhu had the sense to put his ears back out of the way. I’ll be along in a little while, Urruah said. You go sort him out.

She flicked her tail in agreement.“Come on,” she said.

Access for them to the gate’s new lockdown site was the same as it had been for the gate itself, though far less spectacular. As they walked around the corner, Rhiow spoke the numerous syllables of the Mason’s Word, hearing the universe go still around them and leaning in to hear, then feeling the asphalt of Eighth Avenue go summer-soft underneath her. Along with Arhu, who had implemented his own incidence of the Word, Rhiow sank down through the street, into the substrate ofthe road, past the pipes and conduits, the bricks and stones of earlier layers of the street, the cold clayey earth under the stonework, the i-beamed iron ceilings of the track tunnel.

The New Jersey Transit North River tunnel was a bleak, plain, filthy place as yet: it would be months before the ehhif construction crews turned their attention to rebuilding it. The rails ran down toward Penn, off to Rhiow’s and Arhu’s right, as they sank down through the ceiling and airwalked toward the platform; to the left, under the occasional naked bulb jutting out of the stanchions of the walls, the tunnels ran off at a downward slope, heading for their dive under the Hudson. Off to their right, ahead of the two of them, the worldgate could be seen hanging over the left-hand set of tracks, shimmering, its colors slowly calming after all the excitement.

Arhu walked over to the gate, reared up on his hind legs, and sank a single careful claw into the outer edge of the gate, catching one of the control strings and pulling it out. The diagnostic colors and status strings immediately leapt into brilliance, indicating where the gate’s catenary structure – its main power conduit – had been provisionally rerooted into the master catenary that ran under Manhattan, and from there into the more ancient world that was the source of the worldgates’ power. “So the power levels are back up now,” he said. “Ninety percent already, though the last ten won’t come up for a while yet because of the reaction trauma. The unwrap went all right: see, the extra strings have lost their flail and are rewebbing themselves with the main structure – “

His debrief to Rhiow took surprisingly little time. Arhu appeared to have been actually listening quite closely to Urruah, though Arhu normally would have done anything to avoid having anyone get that idea. But the thing that left Rhiow wondering, as Arhu talked her through the rest of the details surrounding the reattachment of the severed gate, was how like Saash he sounded as he talked string tech. It was strange. Yet maybe not so strange: for it was Saash who had perhaps been kindest to him when he first came into the team, Saash who had overwatched him, made sure he ate well and slept clean and dry, and had a proper place to do his business. Attachments, Rhiow thought. So odd. She never taught him a purr’s worth of theory. Yet, style: style communicates itself. And linkages happen where you expect them the least…

Finally she interrupted him in the middle of a long string of gate-tech jargon that would have impressed even Saash.“Enough,” she said. “You did good.”

Arhu flicked an ear at her, looking down toward where Jath and Fh’iss were now sitting together, looking with weary satisfaction at the unwrapped gate, watching its colors die back down from the excited state caused by moving it. “Wouldn’t say that in front of them,” he said.

“Maybe not,” Rhiow said, quite softly. “But I’m not sure it’s all that important to say it to them. To you, that’s another story.”

“They don’t respect you, Rhiow,” he said, and there was a touch of growl in his young voice.

“It’s not about respect, finally,” Rhiow said. “Getting the job done: that’s the issue. Let them be. It’s no fun for them to have someone come tailwaving her way onto their territory and start telling them how things are going to have to be. Soon enough they’ll settle in, when their gate does.”

“So can I go get my pastrami?”

She sighed. Urruah was to blame for this deli fixation on both the kits’ side, and for Ith’s as well: but at least they came by it honestly, asking ehhif for it rather than just stealing it from them. And watching Ith go through the wizardly gymnastics necessary to displace enough of his mass to disguise himself as a Person was always worth an evening’s amusement. “Go on,” Rhiow said. “Take a look around before you go: make sure Harl’h’s people didn’t miss anything.”

“Did that already,” Arhu said, flirting his tail at Rhiow’s slowness.

“Oh really? How, when you’ve been down here with me?”

“Sif’s doing it right now,” Arhu said, sounding smug, and vanished.

She twitched her whiskers forward in a Person’s smile, gave the settling worldgate one last look, and made her way back up the platform to Jath and Fh’iss. They turned on her a look of weary complaisance. There would probably be some minor recriminations from them tomorrow, during the debrief, but right now they just looked too tired.

That made this the perfect time to praise them: when they wouldn’t be able to summon up the energy to reject it. “Are we done?” Jath said as Rhiow came over. “Fh’iss was wrecked: I sent him off for some sleep.”

“We’re done enough for dawn,” Rhiow said. “The full debrief will keep: the gates need time to steady down, anyway. A long night, we’ve had. Jath, Hw’aa, you did a tremendous job. Please tell Fh’iss that too.” She wasn’t beyond leaving out, for the moment, how long it had taken them to commit themselves to make it a success. None of that mattered, now: they were done.

“Yes, well,” Jath said. “I’m still not sure whether we’ve really needed to do this. But the Powers wanted it done…”

“And you can restructure the gates into a better configuration for all the wizards who use the facility,” Rhiow said. “You’ve got so much more room to work down here now.”

“Yes, there is that…”

She waved her tail.“So we’re done. Keep me posted if anything needs my attention. I’m for my bed. Good morning, my cousins, and the Powers send that you sleep sound. No point in wishing you the luck of the hunt: you’ve had it…”

Jath actually purred. As Rhiow was walking away, behind her the first train of the morning came in, rolling towards Penn. A second before the train would have plowed through the airspace where the gate hung, the warp and weft of the worldgate shimmered away out of physicality, hanging hidden where it would remain until Jath and his team finished tweaking it.

Done, she thought. Finally, really done. What a relief… She made her way back up to street level, the same way she’d come.

When she came out onto Eighth Avenue again, the last of the police cordons were being taken down: the cops were heading off around the corner for coffee and donuts: and all the trucks and people, and the Film Board lady, were gone. There was no one left but a grey tabby, looking up Eighth Avenue to where the lights had changed, and a car or two were crossing the intersection from the side streets.

“Done?” he said.

Rhiow just purred. They sidled themselves, shifting out between the hyperstrings into the commonest kind of feline invisibility, and headed crosstown on Thirty-third.“Did you see those power levels settle?” Urruah said, in the same tone of voice as an ehhif saying, “How about those Mets?”

She put her whiskers forward, realizing she was going to get another half hour’s worth of tech talk. Rhiow just kept purring, letting him have a monosyllable’s worth of agreement here and there, until they were right back on the East Side again. Finally, well uptown and about halfway between Lexington and Park, Urruah just sighed. “A good night’s work,” he said.

“You have no idea,” Rhiow said. “Urruah, I think someone should talk to the Powers about you.”

He gave her a look.“I didn’t think I did that badly – ”

She paused long enough to cuff him upside one ear.“You thick-skulled idiot,” she said. “’Ruah, it’s time you thought about doing your team-leader training. Someone has to handle this job after I move on…”

He gave her a shocked look.“Rhiow,” he said. “What are you planning? Don’t you feel well?”

“I feel fine,” she said.

“Then what’s the matter?”

They paused at the corner of Park and looked down the length of it toward Grand Central, watching the lights change in sequence, to no effect: not a car moved anywhere. The gold of the rising Sun caught the top of the Helmsley-Spears building as Rhiow looked at it.“’Ruah, every now and then we all get tired…”

“Tired? You?” He jerked his tail a couple of times, dismissive, as they started across the street. “Come on. Your problem is that you don’t get out enough.”

“You’re going to tell me I need to be watching more oh’ra,” Rhiow said.

Urruah rolled his eyes at her.“You do. But that’s not the problem. You know what I mean.”

She waved her tail in a gesture of feigned non-understanding.“Maybe,” she said. “Let’s discuss it later. But either way, I think Harl’h needs to look into a change of status for you. An upgrade, anyway: and you need to start doing consulting work of your own.”

His own purr was surprisingly restrained.“Not sure I’m in such a hurry for that,” he said. “I like sleeping in my own Dumpster at night.”

She flirted her tail at him as they came to the corner where her ehhif’s apartment building lay. “Think about it, cousin,” she said. “And go get yourself that pastrami. I don’t think I have to watch you eat it.”

“We’ll save you a bit.”

She butted heads with him.“Don’t fret if you forget to,” she said. “Go on.”

For a moment she watched him walk down First Avenue, then turned to walk down her own block, past the brownstones and the parked cars. At the usual spot in the block, she stepped up into the air and activated the spell she kept ready for easy access to the building. The air, reminded that it had once been stone, or trapped in stone, now went solid under her feet, deconstructing itself as her pads left each“step”. Up to the terrace of her ehhif’s apartment she went, leaping up between the railings –

– and froze, blinking with shock. Her litter box was out on the terrace, under the overhang of the next terrace up. And there was another Person in it. Their eyes met.

Shocked, Rhiow held still, starting to fluff up in outraged reflex at the invasion of her territory. A tom: instantly she could see that. Black, though not as black as she was: you could still see the tabby markings through the darkness. Golden-eyed, a broad face, ears a little beat up, a shocked expression. He opened his mouth to speak–

Rhiow blinked. There was nothing there, no one in her box.

She stared: she shook herself. Slowly, her fur still halfway fluffed, she stalked toward the litterbox. She stared into it. No footprints. She sniffed. There was no scent there but the slight odor of the last time she’d made siss: no matter how her ehhif, Iaehh, tried to clean the box perfectly, and no matter what the clumping-litter people claimed about their product’s deodorizing powers, that scent was where she’d left it.

No, she thought, and shook her head until her ears rattled. Just a tired mind playing tricks. Very quietly Rhiow went into the apartment through the cat-door her ehhif had installed for her in the glass of the sliding door. Meditation can wait, she thought, her tail wreathing in bemusement. How much good would I get out of it when I’m so tired, I’m hallucinating?

She wandered through the darkened apartment, back into the bedroom. Quietly Rhiow jumped up onto the bottom corner of the king-sized bed, careful not to wake Iaehh up. He slept lightly, too lightly sometimes, since Rhiow’s own ehhif, his mate Hhuha, had died in an accident.

She stood there in the dark for a moment, missing Hhuha one more time, and once again feeling sorry for Iaehh. It’s not good for you to be alone, she thought. How does one do matchmaking for ehhif, I wonder? How do you engineer it so they get out a little more, and meet somebody nice? It wasn’t a question of replacing Hhuha, of course: no one could do that. But at the same time, it seemed important to ehhif life to be paired. Almost as important as it was for People: though ehhif always seemed to keep their emotional lives so compartmentalized…

She sighed, and then yawned. The long night’s work had caught up with her. Let’s get some sleep, she thought. Time enough in the morning to reorganize Iaehh’s social life.

She sat down and had a perfunctory wash; then her head jerked up as she started dozing right in the middle of it. Enough, she thought, and curled up nose to tail. A moment later she was dozing.

And out of the dream, golden eyes looked at her, thoughtful…

The Big Meow: Chapter Two

Afternoon seemed to come only a breath or two later. Rhiow rolled over and stretched out long, blinking at the bronzy light coming in through the bedroom’s Venetian blinds. From outside, she could hear faint clinking sounds; Iaehh was moving around out there. She heard one of the drawers in the little kitchen open, and then the clatter of ehhif eating utensils being taken out.

Rhiow sat up, gazing around the bedroom. As always, it was hard to avoid a pang of sadness; there was still a faint scent of Hhuha hanging about all the furnishings in the place. She was sure that Iaehh was oblivious to this— the ehhif sense of smell was hardly capable of such delicate detection — but every morning, before she was fully awake, Rhiow had to disentangle that faint scent of her own ehhif from the reality of the present physical world, in which her Hhuha was no longer present.

She let out a long breath, wishing that even once more she might hear that small, strange purr-like sound that Hhuha had used to make when she picked Rhiow up and held her, upside down, in the crook of one arm. But there were some things that not even wizardry could do. Hhuha was in her own place now, the right place for an ehhif to be after physical life was done, wherever that might be. And Rhiow, for her own part, knew that the sorrowful moments were the price she paid for keeping the memory of that relationship green. If she tried to reject them, soon she would have no true memory of Hhuha left, but merely a simulacrum, colored by wishful thinking and the desire to avoid pain, not by truth or life. As a wizard, it was with truth and life that her loyalties lay; so she suffered the pain gladly enough, the way you suffered the pain of biting a thorn out of your paw, though in this case the thorn grew back every day. All you can hope, she thought, is that each day the thorn grows back a little shorter…

Rhiow stood up, stretched fore and aft, and jumped down from the bed. She padded across the carpet, paused by the bedroom door to pull it a little further open with her paw, and wandered out into the living room-dining room area. Iaehh was standing in the tiny kitchen, bending over the stove and stirring something in a small pot. Rhiow stood there under the dining room table, sniffing. Noodles again, she thought. Iaehh, my kit, there’s more to life than ramen! Or there should be. But there had not been much heart in him for cooking since Hhuha died. That had become another of life’s little sorrows for Rhiow. The good smells that had once been part of life in this little den now hardly ever happened anymore; Iaehh’s life had become an endless round of takeout food in sad cardboard cartons. Rhiow found herself worrying about Iaehh’s heart in more than the strictly emotional sense, for half the time the dreadful stuff the delivery men brought smelled more of chemicals and fat that of any honest meat. Here’s an intervention it’s time I started working on in earnest, Rhiow thought. A poor sort of thing it is if you can save the city, save the world, but can’t even save your own ehhif.

She came up behind him to where her water dish sat in front of the oven next to the refrigerator. The name-charm on her collar tinkled against it as Rhiow put her head down into it for a good, long drink. Iaehh turned, looked down at her.“So there you are,” he said. “I thought you were going to sleep all day. Where were you all last night, huh?”

For the moment, she merely waved her tail and kept on drinking. Iaehh had slowly come to terms with the concept that Rhiow was able to jump down onto the roof of the building next door. He’d gradually become less troubled by that, as he couldn’t see how she could possibly get anywhere else from there. Had she been a cat like any of the other cats in the neighborhood, of course he would’ve been right. But that was a misconception of which Rhiow was not going to be able to disabuse him, as the protocols of wizardry forbade her to speak to ehhif in any way that could be understood unless she was actually on errantry concerning them at the time. There had been times, and would probably be again, when she would desperately wish that she had even ten seconds of time to make herself understood; only enough time to say, I have to be out for a few days on an intervention, don’t worry about me, I won’t miss any more meals than I have to… But there was no way. She simply had to try to keep her interventions as short as possible: yet another inconvenience in a life that was already busy enough. And now she had to wear the name-charm he’d bought her as well, in case she got lost somehow…and the jingling of the thing drove her crazy.

Rhiow sighed, and finished her drink, and went over to give Iaehh a friendly rub around the ankles.“Oh,” he said. “And now you’re my friend, because I’ve got food, huh?” He reached up toward the cupboard where the People food was kept.

“I’m always your friend,” she said. It did no harm to answer him in Ailurin, as he couldn’t hear it — very few ehhif could; the subvocalized purrs and trills of the language were usually out of their hearing range — and it kept her from feeling as if she was stuck in a monologue. “Catfood has nothing to do with it.” Then she caught the scent of what he was opening. “Except sometimes. Is that salmon? Oh, you really are observant sometimes! You saw I liked that brand last week — “

“Haven’t heard you shout like that for awhile,” he said. “Come on, let’s see you do your little dance, like you used to do for Sue — “

Rhiow reared up against his bare leg, patting it above the knee, with her claws barely in.“I’ll pull your kneecap right off,” she said, “if you don’t stop waving that dish around over my head. Like I can’t reach it if I really want to! Oh, put that down —”

She took a couple more swipes at the dish with her free paw, letting him play the you-can’t-have-it-game for a little longer. Finally he put the dish down, and Rhiow buried her face in it. After last night’s work, she was starving; and she was relieved to see the way Iaehh was dressed, in his shorts and singlet and running shoes, for it meant that he would be out for at least an hour or two — plenty of time for her to head over to Penn and check with Jath and Fh’iss to see how the gate had bedded in. Probably, she thought, I’m worrying for nothing. Probably the gate’s fine. Otherwise I would’ve heard from them by now.

All the same… if there was anything she’d learned in the years since she had ascended to the rank of senior technician for the North American worldgates, it was that it was rarely wise to assume that things were going to go correctly. Gates were one of the most finicky and complex kind of spell structures that a wizard dealt with on a regular basis. Anything that could be imagined going wrong with them usually did, on a regular if not daily basis. This meant that Rhiow and her teams were some of the busiest wizards in the Metropolitan area. But it was interesting work, mentally stimulating — especially since a worldgate rarely failed in the same way twice — and due to its very nature, a wizard involved in it routinely met some of the most interesting people on the planet, or off it.

“Now where did I put those keys,” Iaehh was muttering under his breath as he rummaged around among the paperwork piled up all over the kitchen table. It was routinely a clutter up there, these days; Iaehh rarely sat down to eat there, as if afraid to be reminded of who in the old days had always sat opposite him at the table, poking him with her chopsticks over the take away cartons.

“They’re up on the counter,” Rhiow said, straightening up from polishing the cat food dish clean. “You remember. You were going to try to make a new place for them, where you would always remember where you left them. Except you can never remember. Oh, come on, Iaehh, strain your brain a little!”

“I’ve really got to get this table cleaned up,” Iaehh said. He kept on turning over papers, stacking them up, shoving them around.

Rhiow sat down in the middle of the kitchen floor and started to wash her face.“Yes, you should,” she said softly,” but you say that every day. And it never gets done. Iaehh, do hurry up, I have things to do, and I’d rather not leave while you’re here watching…”

But he kept right on hunting for the keys in the same place, again and again, even while Rhiow finished washing both paws, and under her chin, and started in again on the left ear, even though it didn’t need it. Finally she lost her patience. She glanced over her shoulder, up on the counter, where the coffee machine sat. There were the keys, right on top of it. And of course, Rhiow thought, he could have left them a little too close to the edge of the coffee machine. He could have… and that’s all he needs to think.

Would you do me a favor? she said to the apartment keys in the wizardly Speech, and to gravity in that very small area. It was only a minuscule change of position that was needed, and as a result Rhiow had to pause for a moment to consult in her mind with the Whisperer to get the exact coordinates.

They came through. In her mind, using the Speech, Rhiow described a little circle around the coffeemaker to limit the locus of gravitational change, and indicated the spot where she wanted the keys to go. Right there, if you would—

Everything in a gravitational field likes to fall, and even more so if you ask it nicely. The keys dropped down onto the counter with an obligingly noisy clash of metal. Iaehh jumped, looked over his shoulder, and then laughed at himself.“I keep forgetting,” he said. “I have a brain like a sieve, these days…”

That was a thought that had occurred to Rhiow, as well. Probably stress, she thought. Iaehh had unexpectedly been promoted at his job, and was now managing a whole department. This had made it easier to keep the apartment he had shared with Hhuha, but he was now twice as busy as he had been before his loss. One more thing to worry about… Rhiow thought.

Rhi?

Rhiow changed position slightly and pushed out a hind leg to wash it. Iaehh had pocketed his keys, and was unlocking the apartment door. You’re up earlier than I expected, she said to Urruah.

I couldn’t stay asleep, Urruah said. Wanted to go over to Penn and check things out.

See, isn’t that what I said? What a professional you are. Especially since I’m the one who should be doing that.

“Okay,” Iaehh said, coming back over the Rhiow and bending down to stroke her head. “You have a nice day, plumptious puss. I’ll be back around dinnertime.”

“Yes, but your dinnertime or mine?” Rhiow said, resigned but affectionate, as Iaehh went out the door, shut it behind him, and started locking all the locks. Sorry, ‘Ruah. He’s running behind today, and so am I.

There’s no big rush, Urruah said. I haven’t been there either, yet. But I didn’t want to call you to make you feel guilty. Jath was asking for you.

Oh, sweet Iau, said Rhiow, standing up in a hurry, what can it be now? Tell me nothing’s gone wrong with the gate –

If it has, he didn’t mention it, Urruah said. It was something about L.A.

L.A? Rhiow said. The Los Angeles gate? Now what on earth— Immediately her mind began to fill with all kinds of terrible visions of something they had done wrong with the Penn gate that had affected the Downside connections of the L.A. microcomplex.

It’s nothing to do with our intervention last night, Urruah said, or at least not as far as I can tell. Anyway, Aufwi is on his way over. He and Jath are going to come up here; Jath wanted to sit tight and watch Aufwi’s transfer, to make sure the Penn gate is behaving itself.

All right, Rhiow said.‘Up here’ where? Are you at home? She had to pause for a moment to think where that was this week: Urruah intended to change dumpsters without warning, but normally he could be found somewhere in the west Seventies, near the better uptown food markets.

No, he said. The Met.

Fine, Rhiow said. Give me half an hour to make a swing through Grand Central— I’ll check our own gates to make sure there are no untoward side effects, and be right along. How did Jath seem you this morning?

Pleased, Urruah said. You’d swear this whole thing had been his idea.

Rhiow stood up and shook herself, putting her whiskers right forward in an expression of rueful amusement. That was how things usually went with Jath. He would protest and obstruct and dig in his claws, and in every way make getting a job done as hard as it could be— and then one sleep and one meal later, it was his own personal success, and could never happened without him. Well, the latter may be true, Rhiow thought. But, Powers that Be, I pray You, don’t make me have to admit to it out loud. I suppose I could bear it, but he’d swiftly become unbearable, and both our teams would suffer.

On the other side of the apartment door, the last locks snicked closed, and Rhiow could hear Iaehh’s footsteps heading off down the hall. ‘Ruah, Rhiow said as she went over to the door, give Jath my best, and let him know that I’ll be along shortly.

By the door, Rhiow sat up on her haunches, putting her front paws against the painted metal. There had been a rash of burglaries in this building a couple of years ago, and she had seen how, no matter how many locks and bolts other ehhif in the building put on their doors, the burglars were in no wise deterred. She had therefore become a bit proactive. The wizardry she had laced into the structure of the front of her ehhif’s den was a variant of that old favorite, the Mason’s Word; it took the very minimal stone content of the plaster on the outside of the wall, and the metallic content of the door, and convinced them both that, as they once had been in the ancient day, they now weighed about a ton and were still part of the insides of a mountain. The burglars whom the police had caught trying to break into the apartment most recently — a few months ago — had been found practically weeping with frustration, their sledgehammers shattered, and the wall and door looking innocently unconcerned by the wholeoperation. There had been no breakins since; the word seemed to have been going around among the local criminal fraternity that the building was haunted. But there was no telling how long this salutary state of affairs would last.

Now, pads against the door, Rhiow spoke the necessary words in the Speech and gave up the necessary energy to refuel the spell. Her workload of late had left her no time to consider how she might expand the spell to the other apartments on this floor. Something else that needs to be handled, she thought, watching the way the subtle fire of the recharged wizardry fled away from her paws and sank deep into the structure of the wall and door. She eyed the underlying structure of the wizardry critically, looking for any weak spots or places where the spell was fraying. But there were none: Rhiow prided herself on doing thorough work that was meant to last. It was a habit you got into when you worked routinely with worldgates. The Grand Central gates had been there for hundreds of years, a wizardry rooted in the depths of time, and placed there, so the Whispering said, by one of the daughters of Queen Iau herself. No wizard in his or her right mind would want to hang substandard workmanship on such a construction.

She looked the wizardry over one last time, then turned and made her way back to the sliding door that let out onto the terrace. Out the little clear plastic flap she slipped, onto the painted concrete of the terrace, and stood there for a moment looking around at the golden afternoon. The terrace was near the corner of the building, on the 70th Street side; off to Rhiow’s left, it was an easy jump down to the concrete parapet and flat, graveled roof of the building diagonally behind theirs. Maybe I’ll go down 69th today, she thought.

And then the litter box caught her eye.

Rhiow stared at it. There were still no footprints in it but hers. So weird, she thought. I really need to get some more rest… And then she laughed a cat’s silent laughter at herself. Like that’s going to happen.

She used the litter box, scratching perhaps a little more enthusiastically than usual to kick away the memory of those strange eyes looking at her. It would’ve been a rather challenging look in reality; people meeting for the first time didn’t stare so. There were proprieties of gaze to be observed, degrees of intrusiveness that were permitted later in a relationship but forbidden early on, and emphatically discouraged at a first meeting. Stress, she thought, externalizing itself at the end of a long day…. Rhiow hopped out of the box, shook the inevitable sticking kitty litter off her feet, slipped between the bars of the terrace, and jumped down onto the roof of the building to the left.

The concrete was warm under her pads; it had been sunny all afternoon, to judge by the residual heat. Did Iaehh bring his water bottle with him? Rhiow wondered, as she walked down the parapet, making for the garden-courtyard tree that grew near the far corner of that building. He’s going to need it, running on a day like this… At the far corner of the building, she paused at the edge of the parapet and looked down into the branches of the tree, a tall, handsome maple. The branches up here were very thin, much too much so to bear her weight. She could always have airwalked it, but she’d had little enough exercise in the last few days, and her muscles were itching for a good stretch. Rhiow crouched, her tail lashing, and then leaped down into the branches.

She saw the branch she was heading for, flung her forelegs around it and sank her claws in. Rhiow merely hung on there for a moment, breathing hard, digging her hind claws in as well and getting her bearings. She glanced over her shoulder, then down along the big branch toward the tree trunk. Some of the people in this building had houiff, mostly little dogs that were all yap and no guts; but there was no kindness in making some poor houff crazy by letting it see her when it couldn’t get at her. Like they’d be able to do that either… she thought, putting her whiskers forward.

As Rhiow shinnied down the trunk, she sidled, insinuating herself between the hyperspatial strings whose effect on matter determined whether it was visible or not. By the time she paused a few feet above the ground, reversed head for tail, and jumped down, only a wizard or another cat could have seen her. There, at the shade-starved corner of the little scrap of lawn behind the building, she stopped once more to glance around and see if there were any People around. Her block had about fifty, most of them held captive inside buildings by ehhif too afraid of the city’s dangers to let them out; the rest were more fortunate “pets”, or People unaligned with ehhif…some of them even nonaligned with other People, “out of pride”. But on a day like this, probably most of them are holed up somewhere cool. In the evening, some of them may come out for a boutof hauissh… when things cool down. But not right now.

She strolled away from the tree, around the corner of the building, and down the narrow little alley that led to a locked and barred wire covered gate giving onto 69th Street. Garbage cans were lined up there against the blind brick wall of the building. They were not as tightly closed as they could have been. Rhiow’s nose wrinkled as she went past; there had been rats here — she could smell their siss trail running up and down the wall and near the base of it, a nasty, thin, acrid reek. Something else to deal with when there’s time, Rhiow thought. Her work in errantry had not taken her so far from her feline roots that she would forget that most basic of enmities between her kind and the things that had gnawed at the roots of the world since time began. But who wants to get all messed up with rat-smell on a pretty day like this? And indeed it was a nice day, despite the heat; there was a steady, soft breeze coming in off the river, taking away the worst of the city stink.

Rhiow crouched at the bottom of the wired-up gate, leapt up onto it, pulled herself up claw over claw to the top of it, teetered for a moment on the topmost iron bar, and jumped down onto the sidewalk. There Rhiow stood for a moment, staying close to the gate so that no ehhif, unable to see her, would come wandering into her before she saw them. But the street was quiet enough for the moment. Down toward Third Avenue, she could see a couple of ehhif dams pushing their kits in strollers; nearer to her, a tall dark tom-ehhif with that strange twisted head-fur they seemed to be going in for these days came wandering down toward her with his arm around a shorter ehhif, a queen. Rhiow let them go by before she headed down the sidewalk herself, and put her whiskers forward a little at the look on their faces. She was sure she was reading it right; she had seen it often enough on Iaehh and Hhuha before, usually a few minutes before they went into the bedroom, closed the door, and began to do what Hhuha had routinely referred to as“the cat-scaring thing.” A nice sort of day for it, Rhiow thought, as she ambled down the north side of 69th Street, past the stairs of the mid-street brownstones; assuming you’re interested, of course. It had been quite awhile since she had been — her ehhif had had her spayed before she was old enough to understand what was happening. But she had never particularly regretted it. Freedom from that particular physical imperative had left her with that much more time to concentrate on the business of being a wizard. Possibly a good thing, Rhiow thought, sidestepping into the stairwell of the basement apartment to let a couple more ehhif-dams with strollers go by. Since, over the last couple of years, if I hadn’t had that spare time to concentrate, for all I know, I’d’ve been dead a couple times over…

Rhiow came to the corner of Third Avenue and 69th and tucked herself as flat as she could against the corner wall of the apartment building there. Ehhif walked to and fro before her while she sat there waiting for the light to change, and wondering what in the world could be wrong with the L.A. gate. It wasn’t a heavily used portal; no interplanetary traffic went through there at all, and mostly short jump traffic off the North American continent toward Asia. As the light changed, she wondered once again why the L.A. gate had never budded off any associated microgates in response to the city’s population’s growth over the last century. Normally, worldgates were a direct response of the fabric of local space time to the fraying pressure of millions of sentient minds concentrated into a small space. Rather than rip right open under the desires of all the beings living crammed together there,spacetime usually tried to conserve itself by producing a sort of semipermeable membrane through which beings who knew the portal’s location could pass. And normally, Rhiow thought as the light changed and she got up and trotted across Third Avenue in company with all of the other pedestrians, but well to one side, a given gate complex isn’t shy about budding if the local population’s large enough. Look at Tokyo: how many gates are there in that complex now? Fourteen? Fifteen? I lose track; this last decade, it’s like the thing’s in heat all the time. It no sooner has one gate that it hauls off and has another…

Rhiow patted the problem around with the paw of the mind for a while as she made her way down 69th toward Park Avenue. But the air was too soft and pleasant, and for once, nice-smelling, for her to find it easy to concentrate. Rhiow crossed Park Avenue, pausing once another crowd of ehhif had gone by to take a moment to smell the flowers there, yellow delphiniums and yellow and purple pansies. The lights went red and green together, and Rhiow scampered across again, heading for Lexington Avenue.

She had a standard covert entrance to the Grand Central complex down at 50th and Lex, but there was no particular need to go straight underground and quickly blot out the scent of that summer air. For a change, Rhiow simply trotted down the west side of Lexington Avenue like any other sightseer or Sunday shopper, until she came to the brass-and-glass doors of Grand Central Market. Urruah’s beginning to contaminate me too, Rhiow thought, amused, as she walked invisibly down between the stalls of beautiful meat and hot breads and shining fruit, sniffing appreciatively, and then out into the food hall full of coffee smells and frying smells. On the far side of the food hall, she paused long enough to gaze over toward the glass-paned arch of the Oyster Bar restaurants, closed this early on a Sunday. But to a cat’s nose, such closure was a relative thing. Behind those doors, Rhiow could smell oysters being shucked, and her mouth began to water. I’m going to get him for getting me hooked on those things, she thought, and ran up the stairs to the Main Concourse.

Sunday in Grand Central merely meant that there were fewer commuters among the crowds walking that wide shining floor, and many more people out for a pleasant day in the city— ehhif parents towing along kits who in turn towed along bunches of bright balloons; shoppers with fat carrybags full of tasty-smelling loot; tourists gawking at the beautiful, newly cleaned sky-ceiling and the great downhanging striped flag. There was no escaping the scent of food here, either;the station’s recent renovation had placed a restaurant at each end of the great Concourse, and from one of them the smell of grilling meat floated most appetizingly. But for the moment, Rhiow had other business. She headed across the floor toward the north-side archway labeled Track 32.

There were a couple of ehhif walking down the long, fluorescent-lit platform ahead of her. Rhiow put her whiskers forward at the sight of them, for though there was no train at the platform, and there wasn’t scheduled to be one there for at least another twenty minutes, they didn’t move like ehhif who were waiting for something that wasn’t there. Rhiow wandered along behind them, saw the two ehhif stop at the end of the platform and look into the dark, down where the overhead lighting stopped and the great broad spread of tracks began to draw together. One of them, a tall young tom with long blond hair and a shockingly loud Hawaiian shirt, pulled out a book and began to page through it. His companion, a she-ehhif even taller than he, though much darker and much more quietly dressed, looked over his shoulder at what he was reading.

They must have had their access spell pre-prepared, for barely a tail-flick later, the gate manifested itself. In the darkness, hanging in midair about a foot from the left edge of the platform, the portal matrix that Rhiow kept anchored by Track 32 shivered into visibility— at least for Rhiow and the wizards. Theoretically, a nonwizardly ehhif could have seen it. But the gate was edge-on to any other ehhif who might have approached up the platform; and it would have been unlikely that a nonwizardly ehhif could have seen a wizardry even if they were looking straight at it. Nonetheless, these two were being careful. The tom-ehhif glanced back down the platform, saw Rhiow, and hesitated— then said, “Cousin, we’re on errantry, and we greet you —”

“I can see you’re in a hurry,” Rhiow said in the Speech. “Don’t let me keep you, cousins.” She strolled over to them, peering through the gate. Past the rainbow shimmer of its edges, Rhiow caught a glimpse of a reddish landscape, rocky and stark, under an indigo sky. “Mars?” she said.

“Morocco,” the queen-ehhif said. “That earthquake.”

“That attempted earthquake,” her companion said. “We’re going to go talk it out of it.”

“Go well, cousins,” Rhiow said. “And Iau on your side!” – for the many variables associated with quakes made working with them a chancy business at best. The young woman waved at her; they stepped through.

A second later they were gone, and the worldgate snapped back into its normal configuration, the familiar interwoven structure of tightly laced hyperstrings, glowing and rippling in the darkness of the tunnel like a silken tapestry of light. This gate, at least, was behaving correctly— serving its proper purpose of helping wizards get around without having to waste the universe’s precious energy on individually-constructed transport spells. Rhiow sat up on her haunches and beckoned the gate a little closer. Obediently it drifted right to the edge of the platform, and Rhiow reached out, hooked her claws into the control-weave at the edge of the gate, and pulled it out taut.

The gate-strands caught in her claws glittered with light and symbology in the Speech, the worldgate’s realtime diagnostics. It was working fine; the relocation of the Penn gates seemed to have had no effect on it all. …At the moment, Rhiow thought. Worldgates were full of little surprises… but then, when you were dealing with a wizardry so complex, and one that got so much use by wizards other than the ones who maintained it, this was only to be expected.

She took a moment to query the other two Grand Central gates via this one’s control structure, but found nothing to concern her: all three were behaving as well as they ever did. All right, Rhiow thought. She let most of the hyperstrings snap back into the body of the gate structure, but kept a claw in one of them. This one she pulled toward her, twisting it to bring up one of the configurations she had long since laid into the gate for casual use.

The surface of the gate shivered again, paling away except at the bright-burning edges. The view was uninspiring— a pocked, pale-beige travertine wall, shadowy even on such a bright day. Rhiow let that last string snap back into the gateweave, gathered herself, and leapt through in the second and a half before the gate would revert to its standby state.

She came down at the foot of that wall and huddled against it for a moment, looking quickly to right and left. Distracted ehhif sometimes came tearing along here in a desperate hurry, running up from the nearest of Lincoln Center’s many ticket windows and plunging around the corner ahead and to her left, making singlemindedly for the front doors of that high-arched and beautiful building where ehhif gathered to hear and sing astonishingly long and involved songs that were usually mostly about sex. And then after five or six hours of it, they sit there and applaud even though there hasn’t actually been any, Rhiow thought, heading up around the corner herself. Ehhif are so odd sometimes…

At the moment, though, there was little traffic in the area. Rhiow got up and made her way down toward that corner herself, standing there for a few moments to enjoy both the breeze that came down through the ticket-window overpass, and the view. Before her the big circular fountain in front of the Metropolitan Opera danced in the westering sun in an ever-changing liquid-gold glitter, and many ehhif of both sexes sat on the broad rim of the fountain’s basin, trying to get themselves as wet as possible. Rhiow looked right and left again, and couldn’t see Urruah in any of his favorite places – at the top of the steps in front of the Met’s doors, out in the fountain plaza, or over by the plaza-side caf? on the ground floor of Avery Fisher Hall, where he liked to cadge goodies from the more cat-friendly tourists at the outdoor tables. He’s inside, then.

Rhiow retraced her steps past the ticket window and under the overpass connecting the Met to the New York Public Library’s music annex. Once out on the Amsterdam Avenue side she hung a left. There she found the big steel backstage doors predictably open, in this weather, regardless of security precautions, and the usual crowd of stagehands hanging around outside it with lit smokesticks in their hands, working hardto breathe in more foul fumes than the City already thoughtfully provided. She flirted her tail in annoyance at one more example of human peculiarity as she stalked past them into the cool airy shadows of the backstage area. If they had more than one life to waste, I could understand it, I suppose.But they don’t. Ehhif…!

The big backstage“fly” area, nearly four storeys high, was as usual full of scenery containers being pulled out of huge trucks and pushed back into them. Even an unsidled Person could have found it easy enough to hide back here – and indeed, there were a number of People wandering here and there, either beingchased or studiously ignored by the workers — but Rhiow had neither need nor desire to unsidle in this stir and bustle of ehhif pulling the contents out of huge crates and stuffing them back into others. She glanced around.

“Up here, Rhi,” Urruah shouted. Rhiow looked around and up, as did numerous of the ehhif, who then shrugged when they couldn’t see anything where the meowing noise seemed to be coming from, about thirty feet up against one of the backstage area’s sheer concrete-block walls. But Rhiow could see where Urruah and Jath were waiting for her up on an outward-jutting structural I-beam. Rhiow spoke her “skywalking” variant of the Mason’s Word spell and went up a stair of air to where they waited, meanwhile ignoring the shocked or annoyed glances of some of the other People in the area. It had taken her a while, early in her career, to get used to the idea that some People didn’t approve of wizardry, or see the point in it, and some didn’t even believe in it. She’d learned eventually not to allow this to affect her work, but sometimes she still found the weight of other People’s regard on her fur an unwelcome addition to the day’s burdens. Even now there were eyes looking at Rhiow from the shadows, behind crates or under tarpaulins, thoughtful, or angry, or filled with other more complex, more unwelcome emotions…

She flirted her tail carelessly and jumped up onto the beam, dismissing the wizardry. Jath was crouched down into a compact bundle of silvery gray, looking relaxed, and as self-satisfied as Urruah had warned her. She bent down to bump noses with him.“Are you rested, cousin? That was some work you did…”

“Rested enough,” he said. “Thanks, Rhiow. But business takes precedence, as usual…” He glanced behind him.

Aufwi was sitting there in front of Urruah, his tail curled up neatly around his toes, and maintaining a posture probably more formal than he strictly needed to use with a wizard who was simply acting in a supervisory capacity in his specialty, and not as an actual Advisory or Senior. It was a courtesy in someone his age, only one life on and a few years into that, but there was really no need for it. To defuse it she went straight over and breathed breaths with him.“Aufwi,” she said, “long time no smell, cousin!” Her lips wrinkled back at the agreeable scent of fresh tuna. “Can that be sushi?”

“I had time for a snack before I came,” Aufwi said.

“Some snack,” Rhiow said. “The Eye can’t have been up more than an hour or two in LA, cousin! I wish more of my breakfasts were like that – “

“I moved into a hHaha’hnese restaurant,” Aufwi said. “They had a vermin problem…I solved it.” He looked smug. “And apparently my coloring’s lucky for them.”

That interested Rhiow. Aufwi was shorthaired and mostly white-furred, but also sported the occasional patch of red-brown or gray.“You need to tell me more about that when you have time,” Rhiow said. “But first tell me what brings you out all this way.”

“Well,” Aufwi said, “at first sniff, anyway, I’d say that the L.A. gate is finally trying to spawn.”

Rhiow blinked at that.“Iau’s name, I thought Great Rhoua would wink before that happened! Though I can’t say I mind being wrong. When did this start?”

“A few weeks ago,” Aufwi said. “At first I thought it was another ‘false labor:’ you know how many of those we’ve had over the years. All these little shudders and discontinuities in the main gate’s function, they build up, they build up some more, and then…nothing!” His tail thumped in mild frustration, and some embarrassment: he’d reported quite a number of these “fleabites” to Rhiow over the past year and a half.

“But this has been different, I take it,” Rhiow said.

“A lot,” said Aufwi. “There hasn’t been anything small about these discontinuities. The gate’s connection to its power sources in the Downside starts wavering, as if something’s pulling power off it – “

“Which is impossible,” Urruah said, “under normal circumstances.” He gave Rhiow a look over Aufwi’s shoulder. Together they had lately been through some very non-normal circumstances involving their own gates, and power-loss or diversion had routinely been a symptom.

“But it always comes right back again,” Aufwi said, tilting one ear back at Urruah. “Then, right after that, you get a spacetime tremor somewhere in the neighborhood, never outside a thousand-meter radius. And never very big, a little shallow gravitational dimple — exactly the kind of thingyou get when a new gate’s about to manifest. It even displays the right kind of offset.” That was a peculiarity of new gates when they opened: they often pushed themselves a little off to one side of the largest local population concentration, rather than appearing right in the middle of it. “And then – “ His tail started to thrash.

“Nothing?” Rhiow said.

“Repeatedly,” said Aufwi. His green eyes narrowed with his annoyance: it was as if he thought this was all his fault somehow. “I can’t get rid of the idea that I’ve been doing something wrong at the management end.”

Over Aufwi’s shoulder, Urruah gave Rhiow a look that was half irony, half sympathy: once upon a time, he’d been full of such complaints himself, before Saash whacked him into some kind of confidence in his own abilities. “So far,” Urruah said, “it all sounds like it came right from the Whisperer toyour ear. You can’t hurry a gate; especially not this one. We all know it’s had a peculiar developmental history. I can’t see any way you’ve misstepped.”

“You’re kind to say that,” Aufwi said. “But this last time – the day before yesterday – the pattern changed a little, and I started to get concerned. It took the main gate something like an hour to get back to normal – in terms of the power conduit to the Downside re-establishing itself – and that could have been big trouble, if I hadn’t been able to shut it down before anyone started a transit through it. Also, the gate jumped out of its normal position.”

“But it’s always doing that,” Urruah said.

Rhiow waved her tail in agreement: the LA gate was famously peripatetic for any worldgate associated with such a large population center.“It’s just that Los Angeles has never had enough people concentrated tightly enough together to convince the gate to put down a permanent spatial root,” she said. “The city’s so spread out…”

“Believe me, I know,” Aufwi said. “It’s the story of my life. Is the gate in Union Station today, or has it rolled over to Olvera Street again, or jumped over to Wilshire? I get a lot of exercise.” This time Aufwi at least looked amused as well as annoyed. “But this time it jumped a lotfurther than usual, right into Chavez Ravine. And it was active when it jumped.”

Jath abruptly glanced up, looking interested.“Were they playing?” he said.

Urruah blinked.“Playing what?”

“Vh’aisss’vhall,” Jath said.

Rhiow knew about the game, but only vaguely: it was something Iaehh often watched on the imagebox in the apartment. For the moment, though, her eyes widened as she thought of a live worldgate falling into a stadium full of unsuspecting ehhif.“You caught it and brought it back, of course….”

“Sure. The gate’d gone quiescent again by then. But they could never find out what happened to the ball that the ehhif at bat hit into it–”

“How did they score that?” Jath said, actually sitting up as if the proceedings were now of some interest to him.

“A strike,” Aufwi said. “Foul tip.”

“Oh, now that doesn’t make any sense,” Jath said. “Was the gate in the ss’hahium when he hit the ball into it? Then it’s an ihhn-hhark hhome-rrhun – “

Rhiow closed her eyes briefly. I will meet the seriously obsessed today, she thought, belatedly starting the meditation she really should have done as soon as she got up. I will meet toms intent on strange interspecies crosscultural activities, an intention mostly meant to distract them from the fact that they’re not having sex right this minute. They will sink the teeth of distraction into my scruff and seek to drag me places I have absolutely no desire to go, being fond of my sanity. Nonetheless I will keep my mind on my business and avoid slicing their ears to ribbons…at least until they’ve forgotten about my scruff and my potential butt, and started discussing oh’ra singers and pastrami and vh’aisss’vhal scoring again.

Down on the main floor, there came a small bang! of displaced air off to one side. Rhiow’s head snapped around, and so did many others of the ehhif down there; but after a moment all the ehhif who’d noticed went back to what they were doing, since what they’d heard had simply sounded like something being dropped on that hard concrete floor. When the second bang! happened, no onebut the People in the room even bothered to look. A moment later Arhu came wandering around the back of one of the huge scenery-crates, and Siff’hah from behind another. Rhiow let out an amused breath. But this was inevitable. I thought about pastrami…

“Sorry,” Rhiow said, turning back to Aufwi. “Aufwi, forgive me; so strange a day we’ve had, my brains are still rattling inside my head as if the Queen had boxed my ears. You got the gate back into place – “

“Yes,” Aufwi said. “Fortunately it’s not hard to move, being so mobile by nature. But, Rhiow, these energy surges and displacements are starting to come closer together. If this gate’s going into real labor rather than these little contractions, we ought to shut it down for through transits until it gets on with its business. But I don’t have the authority for that.”

“I have,” Rhiow said. “But I should go have a look first: so you did right to bring the problem to me.” She glanced over at Urruah. “If we do need to shut it down,” she said, “San Francisco’s complex could take the extra load for the time being, I’d think.”

“They’re not that busy up there,” Urruah. “It should be no problem: and if it started to become one, Vancouver or Yucatan could assist.”

Rhiow waved her tail in assent.“Let’s go, then,” she said. “’Ruah?”

“Sure,” he said, and got up, slipping past her and starting to walk down the air. “I’ve got a place over there in the back where I keep a little transit circle set up – “

“Not where any of these poor creatures can stumble onto it, I trust?” Rhiow called after him, trying not to sound too desperately concerned.

“Not more than one at a time,” Urruah said. “Follow me, please…”

He went on down the air, with Jath after him.“Aufwi,” Jath said over his shoulder, “when you’re done there, come on back, I want to talk to you about this scoring thing…”

“I’m so sorry to have bothered you when you should have been resting,” Aufwi said from behind Rhiow, sounding unnecessarily apologetic. “The Whisperer gave me a precis of what you were up to: I can’t believe you’re up and walking around after a piece of work like that…”

“Cousin, please, no more of it,” Rhiow said, putting her whiskers forward. “You did exactly what you should have. And we don’t see enough of you over here! Jath’s right too – you should come and spend some non-business time with us…get to know our own gates a little, and work with thelocal teams. You haven’t met Arhu and Siff’hah yet: come greet them. Urruah, where are we going, exactly?”

She got no immediate answer, for once down on the floor there followed a few moments of mixing and mingling, breaths being breathed and noses being bumped. Rhiow stepped away after a few seconds and let her team get on with it, thinking that she really must make sure that Aufwi came out to do a brief internship with one or another of the New York teams, preferably her own. His previous senior, Fefssuh, had been easygoing and knowledgeable, but so very senior and set in his ways– Aufwi had come to work with him when Fefssuh was almost twelve – that Aufwi had had too little time or opportunity to develop much in the way of initiative or self-confidence. And those were qualities vital in a gate technician. A week or two with Arhu will sort that out, Rhiow thought. Maybewhen summer’s done and we’ve settled his gate down –

“You slept in today,” Arhu said, falling in beside Rhiow as she went after Urruah, toward the back of the fly area.

“You could have done the same,” Rhiow said. “For a change.”

“I hate to miss anything,” Arhu said, glancing around.

“Nothing much to miss,” said Siff’hah, slipping around to bracket Rhiow on the other side. It was a game of theirs, Rhiow had been noticing: each of them would get up close to one of your ears, and then they would start passing their opinions back and forth through your head. “Look at this crowd,” Siff’hah said, glancing scornfully around at the various People watching them from hiding. “They all think we’re fflah.”

It was one of many words Rhiow had never heard until she started listening to Arhu and Siff’hah trying to verbally or physically shred one another’s ears. Ailurin, like any other language, had slang, but these days it seemed to be changing faster than Rhiow could keep track of. This word, at least, she could tell wasn’t complimentary.

“Not all of them,” Arhu said. “Rhi, you have fans.”

His tone, on the surface, was teasing: but there was something a little uneasy about it as well. Rhiow flirted an unconcerned tail at him.“Around here I wouldn’t be too concerned about that,” she said. “I daresay they’ve got more than enough shes to keep them busy in this neighborhood, and not sth’heih ones, either.” It was the Ailurin word that best translated the ehhif concept “spayed.”

“Not all of them care,” Arhu said. “Looks like some People don’t care whether a queen smells shaih or not – “

She turned around in mid-step and cuffed Arhu hard, then instantly regretted it. I might have slept in, but not enough, perhaps… “Mend your language, kit,” she said, turning back to continue following in Urruah’s wake: but as she turned she caught the glance that Arhu had caught, from the darkness deep inside one of the unloaded scenery crates. Pale eyes, wide, looking at her with an expression she could make nothing of: as if she was some kind of bizarre alien creature, dangerous but nonetheless peculiarly desirable –

She looked away, walked a little faster.“Like I said,” Arhu said under his breath.

“Don’t judge,” Rhiow said under her breath. “We have comfortable enough lives, and we know what we’re for, and have work to do that we enjoy. Who knows if that Person does? Who knows what he suffers, or enjoys, without talking to him? There’s more to a life than the way it looks. Don’t make decisions about him because he stares.”

Arhu flirted his tail at her in that I-don’t-care way he had when he did care, but didn’t feel like pressing his case with her. She rolled her eyes and went on along behind Jath, following him and Urruah over to the far back corner of the fly area, down a little low-ceilinged concrete-walled hallway, and through a small open door.

Rhiow stopped there, looking in shock at the furnishings of the room, which consisted of two ceramic receptacles, one on the floor and one on the wall.“Urruah,” she said. “In their toilet?”

“No fear of a crowd of them walking into this transit circle, is there?” Urruah said, cheerful. The wizardry blazed up through the white square-tiled floor as they watched.

“Your ingenuity knows no bounds,” Rhiow said, and this was true, though the Speech itself didn’t necessarily have to convey her sarcasm as well. “Aufwi?”

Aufwi stepped on the circle and spoke to it briefly in the Speech, laying in the required coordinates.“Let’s go…”

All it took was a step, and then everything was changed: from the harsh white glare of a single downhanging bulb, and the strange decayed-violet smell of old ehhif siss, to the glare of bright direct sun under a peculiarly open-seeming sky, and a wind laden with the sharp bimetallic taste of city-by-the-sea, as well as a brown hint of smog. Rhiow glanced around her to see if someone was about to trip over her, but no ehhif were anywhere near: the plaza in which they all stood was a near-empty desert of blazing white paving.

Without warning, Aufwi began to curse. Rhiow looked at him in surprise, and Arhu and Siff’hah stared, for his vocabulary was starting to resemble theirs in both filthiness and vehemence. He caught Rhiow’s look, though, and tried to restrain himself. “It’s not fair,” Aufwi said, his tail lashing furiously and his ears down near-flat. “Where’s the vhai’d thing gone now??”

“What?” Rhiow said. “The gate? You didn’t leave it out here, did you?”

“Of course not! But I can feel that it’s not where I did leave it!” Aufwi stared all around him, as if expecting the gate to pop up through the ground. “It was inside the station, down by the Red Line tracks. I’ve been trying to train it by putting it back in the same spot every time it jumps…”

Urruah laughed, that ironic sound of his again.“Might work with a gate that’s part of a complex and has some rootedness associated with it,” he said, “but not with one that hasn’t spawned yet. Nice try, though. Take a breath and see if you can feel where it’s gone.”

Aufwi glanced over at Urruah and then relaxed, his ears gradually coming up and his whiskers going forward. Rhiow found herself wondering how easygoing Fefssuh had actually been with his prot?g? when his supervisors, of whom Rhiow was merely the latest, were not around. How many times has this kit had his ears boxed for something that wasn’t his fault, I wonder? I really must see about that internship…

Aufwi had gone a little unfocused for the moment, hunting in mind for his gate. Rhiow left him to it, turning to look around the plaza. Here, too, the ehhif weekend meant that few human commuters were around, and there was leisure to admire the broad handsome vista of new buildings spreading back from the central, old one, a massive white stucco structure with its peaked roof done in red tile, accompanied by a massive white campanile clock-tower. This place had become nearly moribund once, years before Rhiow’s time: it had actually seen a time when only two trains a day came through it. Then the city’s ehhif saw sense and started to rebuild their local rail system, routing it through here and awakening Union Station from its long slumber.

“It’s all right,” Aufwi said then. “I’ve got it. It’s as I thought: it’s slipped over to Olvera Street again. It likes it there,” he said, turning to Rhiow. “That’s the oldest part of the city, and it seems kind of torn as to where it wants to be – over there, or over here in the oldest transport center.”

Rhiow put her whiskers forward, for here once again was fuel for that oldest debate: were gates alive? Wizardries so complex often started to display some of the characteristics of life– they required energy, they reacted to stimuli, they reproduced – and, especially in the case of worldgates, they seemed to start to acquire some sense of what they were for. “Is it far?” she said.

“Across the street,” Aufwi said. “Come on.”

He led the way across the plaza to where it ended in a drop-off space for cars and buses, and a set of traffic lights. The distance was what for Rhiow would have been more like four or five short city blocks: but out here, ehhif built their roads on a larger scale than Manhattan would ever have allowed. They waited for the traffic roaring by to cease, and then trotted hurriedly across the six lanes to the long line of handsome white buildings on the far side.

There were far more ehhif over here, even at this time of the morning; Aufwi led Rhiow and the group in the wake of some of them, under a high wide white-stucco arch and through into a long pedestrianized space, itself like a small street sheltered on both sides by a double line of stucco buildings, mostly low and red-tiled, though much older-looking than Union Station had been.

“This looks like it’s been here for a while,” Urruah said, glancing up and down the pedestrian precinct, and sniffing. Down to their left, a long line of little stalls in the middle of the precinct stretched down toward its far end: and some of them, to judge by the scent of grills firing up,were getting ready to open for business.

“A few hundred years,” Aufwi said. He was sniffing too, but for something else. “A long time, as ehhif here reckon it – they don’t seem to have been able to keep much else from that period around. Torn down, or buried, or worn out and forgotten… Aha! There we are. Same as last time – “

He led them down toward the center of the pedestrian precinct, past shops hung with bright-colored ornaments, past splashing fountains and old adobe houses festooned with lush green grapevines. In a mostly-paved circle at the heart of it all stood pedestals bearing statues of formal-looking ehhif of ancient days: these alternated with tall handsome trees whose downsweeping branches and leaves gave off a spicy fragrance. There, under one of the biggest trees, on the south side of the circle, Rhiow caught the daylight-subdued shimmer of a sheet of interwoven hyperstrings. The worldgate hung there apparently from a branch of the tree that was outthrust about eight feet from the ground, looking for all the world like some ehhif’s laundry hung out to dry.

“Now there you are,” Aufwi said to the gate, stalking over to it, and then walking slowly around it and looking it over carefully. “How am I supposed to take proper care of you when you misbehave like this? Huh?”

Rhiow turned her head away so that Aufwi wouldn’t see her put her whiskers so far forward that they were in danger of falling right off. “Aufwi,” Urruah said, and Rhiow could hear him struggling to keep his own laughter under control, “maybe you could take a moment off from scolding your problem child to pull out the diagnostic structures and take it offline. Then we can have a look and see what seems to be biting it.”

It was Aufwi’s turn to laugh, then. “Sure,” he said, and reared up on his haunches, reaching up to the downhanging gateweave –

Something kicked the world, hard.

At least that was Rhiow’s first sense of what was happening. It was like being in a building that had been hit by a truck. But they were not in a building, and there were no trucks, and the shock nevertheless went right up through her legs and jolted her so that she nearly fell over where she stood. Half in panic, she staggered and tried to get back her balance, staring around at the others. Arhu and Siff’hah were crowded together, half supporting each other, their ears back and all their fur standing on end: Urruah’s tail was fluffed out to easily five times its normal size: Jath’s eyes were so wide that Rhiow thought they were going to pop out of his head. “What in the Queen’s Name was that?” Rhiow said, shaking all over as she managed to stand upright again.

“Only a little one,” Aufwi said. Not only had he not fallen over, he was still up on his haunches with his claws in the gate’s strings: as she watched, he pulled out the “master function” hyperstring and twisted it until the weave of the gate faded to nearly nothing in the bright air, signaling its deactivated mode. “No problem.”

Rhiow’s eyes went wide. “That was an earthquake? A little earthquake? Powers that Be preserve us from a big one!”

“That’s what we’re working on,” Aufwi said. The sheerly unruffled quality of his demeanor astonished her. He gets nervous about being yowled at a little, but the world moves under him and he shrugs his tail? Rhiow thought. “Seriously, Rhiow, that one wasn’t bad. I’d make it no more than, oh, a four point five.” His face was as casual as that of a Person asked to rate a given brand of People food. “These little short-sharp-shock ones are no big deal: one bang and it’s all over. You want a quake, you want one of the ones where the ground sort of rolls underneath you, the ones with the big transverse waves–”

“I do not want them,” Rhiow said, “any of them, thank you very much!” She looked all around her. “I thought I heard some things falling–”

“Oh, sometimes a piece of stucco’ll fall off down here,” Aufwi said. “But not much more. The ehhif who built these houses, they were smart – they knew what they were dealing with. Nothing more than a storey or two high, small windows, long low buildings that hug the ground so there’s not so far to fall–”

“They’ll have felt this where the buildings are a lot taller,” Urruah said, glancing westward to where the towers and spires of “downtown” Los Angeles rose.

Aufwi put his head to one side, listening to the Whisperer.“No serious damage,” he said after a moment. “Some cracks in walls, some minor injuries from things falling on People or ehhif. And things look all right around here.” He looked up at the bright sky, waved his tail. “’Just another day in Paradise…’”

Rhiow had her doubts that this was anything like Timeheart, either the ehhif version or her own, if such occurrences were commonplace. And without warning, the hair stood up all over her again. Oh, stop that, what’s the matter with me today –

Something kicked the world again: and this time, the kick felt much harder. Rhiow’s heart felt like it was seizing inside her. Knowing what was happening wasn’t making the experience any easier to deal with: it was making it worse. Rhiow wanted to yowl in terror, and barely managed to restrain herself as she staggered for balance. Iau Queen of Everything, help me hang on —

“Aftershock – !” Aufwi said, as Rhiow and the others tried to keep from falling over. “Don’t worry, only four point one or so that time – “

In front of them, the near-invisible gate shivered all over like the back of a Person who’d been bitten by a flea. The gate’s weft writhed, puckered, writhed again –

Someone came through and fell to the ground.

They all stared.

It was a Person. He was black all over, nearly as black as Rhiow, but exposure to much sun or the natural cast of his coat was letting all the usually-concealed tabby markings show through the darkness of the fur. He was dusty and rather thin, a long-faced, long-legged tom with tilted brass-yellow eyes.“Oh, thank Iau,” he said, gasping as if with exertion as he picked himself up, “I got it right. I didn’t want to keep you waiting. I didn’t, did I? There’s no time to lose – “

He had the air of a Person hanging on with every claw to keep himself from going frantic. His tongue went in and out over his nose three or four times in a row as he tried to get his composure, staring around him.“But it’s really going to be all right now,” the tom said then, looking from one to another of them, and last of all his eyes came to rest on Rhiow. “I made it. I’m here. I’m on errantry, and in need and haste I greet you – “

It was a form of the Avedictory that Rhiow had only rarely heard used— the one meant to convey utmost urgency. “Cousin,” she said, “tell us your name, and tell us how we can help you.”

“Hwaith,” he said. “I’m Hwaith. Our gate is malfunctioning, the LA gate – “

“But it’s fine,” Aufwi said, glancing up at it.

“The kind of fine that means People can come through it after you’ve shut it down?” Urruah said. “I’d say that is the wrong kind of fine.”

But Hwaith was already lashing his tail“no”. “Not that one,” he said, and licked his nose again, nervous. “My Los Angeles gate.”

Rhiow’s eyes went wide. “Hwaith, you’ve timeslid, haven’t you? When are you from?”

“2432022.873981,” Hwaith said.

At the sound of the middle three digits before the decimal point, Rhiow blinked, then said silently to the Whisperer, Would you check me on this?

A twenty-digit conversion of the Julian date was slipped into her mind, including cognates in ehhif and cetacean eras. Rhiow blinked again. Are you sure? she said silently.

Inside her head, the Mistress of the Whispering made a small demure coughing sound like someone giving polite warning that she was getting ready to dispose of a hairball, or a ridiculous question. Sorry, Rhiow said, for one did not casually query the soundness of the advice of Hrau’f the Silent when on errantry. Sorry, reflex…

“That would be nineteen forty-six, as the ehhif make it,” Rhiow said. “Cousin, you know the rules about front-timing – “

“And you know it’s impossible in the first place if someone from the front-time hasn’t given you the necessary coordinates and conditionals,” he said. “You did that. Will do it.”

“Not without a fair amount of explaining,” Urruah said.

“And the Powers have sanctioned it,” Hwaith said. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be here. Please, cousins, you’re needed to put right what’s gone wrong! You’re the answer.”

This response left Rhiow, as usual, very unnerved as to the possible nature of the question. But at least this was a nervousness she knew what to do about– unlike having the Earth move under her. “What’s needed, Hwaith?” she said. “What’s the problem?”

He looked at her for a moment as if wondering where to begin.“Something’s trying to subvert our gate,” he said. “Something that wants to use it for its own purposes.”

Jath looked annoyed.“The Lone Power,” he said.

“Again,” Arhu and Siff’hah said in cranky and slightly bored-sounding unison.

“No!” Hwaith said.

They all stared at him.“No,” Hwaith said again. “Something else. Something worse.”

“Worse than the Lone One?” Rhiow said, astounded.

Hwaith let out a long breath and sat down, his tail thumping on the ground.“Much worse,” he said. “Something from outside.”

Rhiow sat down too, the world rocking under her in a way that had nothing to do with the San Andreas Fault, but was nonetheless not much of an improvement.“Tell us,” she said…

The Big Meow: Chapter Three

“I know it sounds insane,” Hwaith said a few minutes later. The plaza at Olvera Street had already begun to fill up with more and more ehhif, so everyone had taken the simplest available option and climbed the biggest of the peppertrees, perching or couching themselves on one or another of the big thick outthrust branches twenty feet or so above the ground.

“Worse than the Lone Power…!” Arhu was muttering under his breath. He had to mutter louder than usual, as from maybe twenty feet above his head, and everyone else’s, various muted screeching and grinding-gear noises were coming from the many annoyed, glossy-black grackles in the tree, all now perched well out of reach and emitting avian curses.

“I know how it sounds. But think about it,” said Hwaith, glancing over at Rhiow as if hoping for support. “It’s evil, yes, and does evil, often enough, from our point of view: it’s entropy embodied, no arguing that. But at least it’s a force native to our sheaf of universes, something interior.”

“I’ll grant you,” Rhiow said, “things exterior to the sheaf wouldn’t be something I’d spend a lot of time thinking about on a daily basis.”

“Who would?” Hwaith said. “We have enough troubles inside.” He sat up and scratched emphatically behind one foreleg.

“I take it you’ve done all the usual diagnostics,” Urruah said. “And the problem’s not with the gate.”

“Let’s put it this way,” Hwaith said; “the problems we’ve been having aren’t the L.A. gate’s usual problems.” He glanced over at Aufwi: Aufwi put his ears back and looked away, a gesture of shared annoyance. “You know the way the thing jumps around. That was my first hint that something was going wrong: it started to stay put.”

Aufwi looked back, going rather wide-eyed with incredulity.“Where?” he said.

“Beechwood Canyon,” Hwaith said, “up by Mount Lee — just south of Mulholland Boulevard. It rolled up there one morning in the middle of an earthquake, and started putting a root down into the hillside.”

Aufwi looked dubious.“Normally I’d have gone right out and caught a rat for Queen Iau as a thank-offering,” he said. “Not like we haven’t been praying for a hundred years that the gate would eventually see fit to settle in someplace! But Mount Lee…?” His tail lashed. “Why on Earth? That’s too much offset for even this crazy gate. There’s no transport center there, and the population’s fairly sparse up that way even now! It’d just have been a couple of hillsides’ worth of brush, back in your time.”

“I don’t have answers for you,” Hwaith said, and his tail was lashing harder than Aufwi’s. “There hasn’t been time to find them. Right when the gate started trying to root, we started having earthquakes, cluster after cluster of them. At least five or six a day, some of them big kicks, some of them just little…but they had that ‘precursor’ feel to them, like they might be the heralds of something big. Half the wizards in L.A. dropped what they were doing and tried to deal with them, but they weren’t having much luck. The only thing that seemed to make a difference was about a week later, when I managed to pry the gate loose from where it was digging itself into the canyon and drag it back down here where it belonged. Then the quakes died down….”

“A coincidence, perhaps?” Rhiow said. “New Moon, or full? That would explain the week’s worth of increased activity–”

Hwaith gave her an exasperated look, and Rhiow glanced away, a touch embarrassed to see a newly-met wizard so openly fraught.“The Moon had nothing to do with it,” Hwaith said, “or at least the Whisperer didn’t think it did. I got suspicious and did a deep diagnostic on the gate, pushing the analysis all the way into the main catenary connection to the Old Downside. I thought that, since that dimension’s so muchmore central than ours, I’d be able to get a better idea of what was making the gate act so oddly.”

Hwaith licked his nose four or five times in rapid succession.“What I got back was a sense that all that part of spacetime was being leaned against. Something pushing, pressing, from outside, wanting in. And at the same time, it was sucking and pulling at the gate, trying to get it stable and rooted deep, so it could be used for…something.” The fur was standing up on Hwaith’s back now, a long dusty ridge running right down to his tail, which was going fluffy with alarm. “And when I finished the spell, I could tell that Hrau’f Herself had been looking over my shoulder all the time, and the fur on Her back was up too. She said, ‘You will need help to understand this, and to stop it: for it isn’t pointed just at you. Here’s where to go.” And Hwaith looked around him at the tree and the dappled sunlight on the plaza, as if he didn’t quite believe in them: and then at Rhiow.

The fur started to stand up on her too. Rhiow had to look away and wash an ear, and she tried not to have it look more like composure-grooming than it had to: but the ragged look of intensity and fear in Hwaith’s eyes was unnerving her as much as the implications of what he’d said. Anything that can frighten Hrau’f the Silent… she thought. “You’re implying,” Rhiow said, “that whatever has been trying to happen in your time, is also going to try to happen in ours, if it’s not dealt with first in backtime.”

“That’s what She gave me to understand,” Hwaith said, “yes.”

“Why?” Urruah said. “What did She say it was?”

“She didn’t,” said Hwaith. “She said, We won’t know until you do. And you won’t know until they do–”

Urruah swore under his breath, a not-very-restrained yowl. Rhiow gave him a look, and then glanced over at Arhu and Siffha’h, whose expressions were jointly very neutral– meaning that they weren’t sure what was going on, but weren’t going to be caught admitting as much. “This is one of those annoying little courtesies the Powers that Be like to do us,” Rhiow said. “The dignity of joint creation. The Powers aren’t the only ones making our worlds happen: we are, too. But They can be as uncertain about the way events unfold as we are. Oh, living outside time in the full flow of Eternity may seem very nice to us….but beings who permanently reside on the far side of Time tend to have trouble affecting timeflow by themselves. They need someone who lives inside to–”

“Do Their dirty work!” Arhu and Siffha’h said in annoyed unison.

“Somehow,” Jath said, “I doubt the One sees it that way.”

“Jath’s right,” Urruah said. “And though the Powers are creators and caretakers, they’re not omnipotent or omniscient. Sure, They intervene here directly, sometimes, when things get bad — but not more often than They have to. We, on the other hand, live here. We know better how time works than They do: we experience it physically. They can’t do that without help from us….”

“And sometimes they can’t be sure what’s going to happen inside sequential time until we make it happen,” said Rhiow. “This sounds like one of those cases.”

“But we’re already inside a time paradox!” Arhu said. “He’s here because we went to him! But if we go to his time, it’ll be because we–”

“Don’t say ‘if’!” Hwaith said, putting his ears back. Then he caught sight of Urruah’s annoyed look, and his tail slowly twitching. Hwaith put his ears forward again. “Please,” he said: but he said it to Rhiow.

For an uncomfortable moment or so there was no noise but the grackles overhead, still making their rusty-gear screech. It was louder now: since none of the People in the tree were doing anything about the grackles, the birds had been hopping stealthily lower, twig by twig, to see if they could somehow make People’s lives more difficult. Rhiow looked up through the leaves and saw one round golden grackly eye bent thoughtfully on her. “Hwaith,” Rhiow said then, glancing back toward him, “you put me in a difficult position, for the situation’s far from clear as yet.”

“Clarifying it’s going to take time,” Hwaith said, “and it’s what we don’t have much of, where I am. But here, you have all the time in the world…for the time being.” He had slipped into the Speech for the moment, and the conditional tenses he was using were a lot more conditional than Rhiow would have liked. “All I know for sure, all the Whisperer told me, is that my problem is your problem. Or, shortly, it will be. Solve mine, you’ll solve yours. But if my problem isn’t solved, you’re going to find yourself dealing with it– and it’ll be a much tougher fix, She said. If not nearly impossible.”

Rhiow and her team, and Jath and Aufwi, looked at one another.“Cousins, please,” Hwaith said, getting up and shaking himself all over, “I shouldn’t be here any longer: I have to get back and make sure my gate’s all right — I don’t trust it out of my sight for more than a few minutes at a time, the way it’s been acting. There’s so much more to tell, but this is the wrong end of time to be telling it in! You have the coordinates where I’ll meet you–”

Rhiow could feel them lying at the back of her mind, ready to be used. There was the indicator that the proposed intervention had been sanctioned, and at a very high level: when the Whisperer was so direct with you, it didn’t do to start arguing the fine points of an intervention until you’d begun it and had a better idea of exactly what was involved. Yet the choice to go or not lay with her — the “dignity” of co-creation lay once again dumped in front of Rhiow for her attention, bloody and twitching, like a half-dead rat. And speaking of twitching, there was poor Hwaith, watching her with those narrowed brassy eyes, waiting for her choice. She found herself wondering whether this kind of nervous tic was part of his normal mode of operation — the way Saash had never been able to stop scratching while she was still inside her ninth life’s skin– or simply transient discomfort at being in the middle of a forward timeslide, an enterprise naturally fraught with all kinds of danger. He caught her look, held it for a second, then looked away again, as if embarrassed —

“…We’ll come,” Rhiow said at last. “We have to make some preparations of our own, you’ll understand. But we’ll be with you shortly.”

“Thank you!” Hwaith said. “Well met on the Journey–”

And he was gone.

The brief inrush of air to the place where he’d been caused a gust of wind in the peppertree’s branches. From above them all, the grackles screeched again, more loudly now, reading the breeze– unusually rationally, for birds so far down the food chain — as something that was somehow the cats’ fault. Everyone rolled their eyes.

Everyone but Urruah, at least. He was looking at Rhiow with an expression that normally meant (when he was going to agree with her) that he was going to find a way to improve on what she’d already decided, or (when he wasn’t in agreement) that he was trying to find a better plan without being overtly offensive.

“Is anyone really buying this?” he said.

Oh, well, Rhiow thought, tucking herself down on the branch in a neutral pose that kept the paws folded in, so as not to show what might be in their claws, so much for not being offensive! Did he have enough breakfast, I wonder? He always starts growling when his stomach does…

“You can buy what you like,” Arhu said, “but if the Whisperer’s selling, I’m in.”

“What he said,” said Siffha’h, hunching herself down beside her brother.

Rhiow closed her eyes, hearing the challenge:“I’ll see your offensiveness, and raise you ten claws and a jawful.” So much for Urruah’s seniority! But the two kits were young and still in the first flush of their power, and when they closed ranks and started reinforcing each other’s sometimes wildly uninformed but emphatic opinions, there was often trouble.

Jath’s ears were already flat at such disrespect to a more senior wizard, and he had an eye on Rhiow, waiting to see what she was going to do. Rhiow removed her sidelong glance from him very slowly, as if not officially noticing his expression — the way you “took back” a move in hauissh. The look she turned on Arhu and Siffha’h was a dam’s look, patient for the moment, but meant to communicate that the big hard clout behind the ear was waiting. “You two want to relocate your manners,” she said, “before I slice some holes in your hides and install new sets.” Not waiting for anyreaction, she then glanced over at Urruah. “Meanwhile, perhaps you want to take the time to explain your concerns to these two experts. Though if you’d rather just knock them out of the tree, I’m sure I’ll understand.”

Arhu and Siffha’h had the grace to look a little chastened. Strangely, though, so did Urruah. “I don’t know,” Urruah said. “It just all sounded a little dubious to me, somehow. And sketchy.”

“A hunch? Well, we don’t always have a lot of data under our paws when we start an intervention,” Rhiow said. “Granted, that can make decisions harder. But I don’t doubt Hwaith’s sincerity. And he dropped into the Speech for the part of the conversation that mattered…so there’s no question of this being any kind of fabrication on his part.”

“Misapprehension, though,” Urruah said, “is always a possibility–”

And then something very, very large kicked the tree, and the world heaved upwards and then sank away again…

The grackles burst up out of the tree and into the milky blue, screeching. Below, from the ehhif in the plaza, there were some muffled exclamations at the shake, and some not at all muffled. Over on the main road they’d crossed, tires screeched and some horns blew. In the parking lot on the northern side of Olvera Street, behind the oldest part of the pueblo, car alarms started to go off in a sporadically augmented cacophony of hoots, honks, and warbles. Rhiow closed her eyes and hung onto her branch of the tree, as the vibrations from the kick started to fade away. Then there was another one.

What vhai’d kind of bark do these things have! Rhiow thought in fury as the shaking went on, and on… She dug in her claws as hard as she could, but the bark was too smooth, she was starting to slip–

The shaking gradually faded away. Arhu and Siffha’h and Urruah and Aufwi and Jath were all still hanging on and looking around them as if waiting for one more punchline to the cosmic joke: but nothing came.

“Five point one or so,” said Aufwi, as Rhiow pushed herself upright from the branch, more by force of will than anything else. What she really wanted to do was get down out of this tree and put herself flat against the ground, where there would be no further she could fall. Except it wouldn’thelp! The ground could still start bouncing around —

Urruah looked up through the branches at the cloudless sky.“All right, all right, I get it!” he shouted at the Silent One. “Have you ever heard of subtlety??”

Aufwi cocked his head to one side.“Different epicenter on that one,” he said after a moment.

“Oh?” Urruah said. “Where was it?”

How can you possibly sound so casual after something like that? Rhiow said silently to him, once again forcing herself to sit still and keep from indulging in a fit of composure-grooming.

When I’m covering for you, Urruah said. So for Iau’s good sake just shut up and put yourself right!

“Rancho Sierra Vista,” said Aufwi. “It’s thirty miles or so up the coast, at the top of one of the big coastal canyons– five miles or so inland from Malibu. The first one’s epicenter was up in the Hollywood hills–”

“Near Beachwood Canyon, by any chance?” Arhu said.

Aufwi looked thoughtful.“Now than you mention it, about halfway up–”

“Uh huh,” Urruah said. He looked over at Rhiow. “This last one was worse, though. We’d better have a look at Sierra Vista first. Then when we go back, we can compare this quake to one or more of Hwaith’s, and see if they’re somehow similar. And if it is–”

Don’t say if! said a desperate voice in her mind.

Rhiow stood up and made a great show of stretching, fore and aft, as she thought.“Then the case is proven, at least enough for a start. All right,” she said. She looked over at Jath. “Cousin, we’re going to be busy a while, it seems. You’re going to have to mind the gates at Grand Central while we’re sorting this out. Are you willing?”

The question was more ceremonial than anything else.“I accept with good cheer,” Jath said.

I bet you do, especially since you’ve been wanting to get your paws on my gates for– how long now? Since Ffairh went out-of-skin, anyway. It was one of those minor irritations that had been nibbling at the end of Rhiow’s tail for a long time. Jath had always seen himself as heir-apparent to the master supervisory position forthe New York gating facilities…especially since it brought with it supervision of all the other North American gates. He’d taken it badly when, on Ffairh’s nomination of her, Rhiow had succeeded to the position: but there had been nothing he could say or do, as the Powers that Be had “confirmed in silence” by raising no objection, and Harl’h, as the involved Supervisory wizard, had done the same. Rhiow had found dealing with the situation difficult, early in her career. But over time her ears had become more resistant to the claws Jath had tried to hook into them, and finally he’d given up bothering her and gone back to watching his own mousehole.

“I thank you,” Rhiow said, “and the Powers lay Their tails over your back as They walk this path with you.” Because They’ll need to!– for the Grand Central gates were not only more central and more senior than the Penn group, but famously cranky and difficult to manage. But then again, Rhiow thought, putting her whiskers forward somewhat belatedly, and possibly for the wrong reasons, maybe this small adventure will give you a sense of why I’m running Grand Central, and you’re not.

That was an unworthy thought, though. Rhiow turned away from it…but with just a few whiskers still forward. “Aufwi,” she said, “you know the here-and-now Los Angeles gate better than any of us: we’ll need you to act as anchor for us here, and consultant, so that we can talk to you when we’ve looked at Hwaith’s gate and have a realtime baseline tojudge it by.”

“No problem with that,” Aufwi said, glancing down at where the dislocated gate still hung, gently stirring, from its branch. “When I get it back in place, I’ll run another diagnostic before I take it offline, and compare the recent logs against the ones from Hwaith’s time. That way we cansee if the gate’s showing any signs of acting the way it was back then.”

“Just what’s needed,” Rhiow said. “Thanks, cousin. Do you know the area where this last quake was?”

Aufwi got that stricken look again.“No,” he said, “not really–”

Rhiow laughed as she got up, even though she staggered a bit– it was as if her legs had become suddenly unwilling to trust the solidity of the branch underneath her. “Calm down,” she said, “it’s not as if we expect you to know everything — !”

Arhu had sat up too, and still had his head tilted a little to one side.“I can see it,” he said. “There’s a gateway, and a hill. And I hear water coming down nearby…”

Rhiow put her ears forward, pleased that he’d so quickly found where they needed to be. Though he’d possessed the Eye, the visionary gift, from his first hours as a wizard, controlling it was another story. “We’ll do a short-jump transit, then,” Rhiow said, “and see what’s going on up there.” She glanced down and around to make sure there were no ehhif nearby, but they were mostly in other parts of the plaza– for all she knew, they’d been concerned that the tree might fall on them during the earthquake. “Probably that parking lot behind these buildings will be a good place,” Rhiow said: “it won’t be too full yet. Siffha’h, will you go lay out a transit circle for us? Arhu will pass you the coordinates.”

“Right,” Siffha’h said, and vanished with a small inrush of air. A second later, Arhu did the same.

Aufwi jumped down to the next branch, over which the gate was hanging, and sank his claws into the weft of it.“Call me when you need me,” he said to Rhiow; then he pulled the gate up from the branch and dove through it, taking it with him as he vanished.

Jath got up and stretched, a long casual gesture meant to suggest that earthquakes were nothing in particular to him. I saw your eyes, though, Rhiow thought. Why are you bothering with this petty point-scoring…? Or am I overly sensitive at the moment because the Earth just tried to kick me off like a flea?

“You’ve got your claws full with those two,” Jath said.

Under any other circumstances Rhiow would have immediately agreed: but with her nerves in their present state, she was unwilling to give Jath the satisfaction.“They’re both extremely talented,” Rhiow said, “and living proof of the old saying that sometimes the Powers mean the trainers to be the trained as well.” She put her whiskers way forward. “Meanwhile, the Track Thirty-Two gate at Grand Central will be running its pre-peak diagnostic shortly. I wouldn’t like to make you miss that…”

Jath’s expression went concerned…and acquisitive. “No,” he said, “of course not — Hunt’s luck to you, Rhiow, Urruah–”

He too vanished. Urruah gave Rhiow a look.“You sent him off to watch an automated log dump?” Urruah said. “Half an hour of figures as dry as a roadkill squirrel? You’re cruel.”

“Powers forbid I should deny him any of the joys of managing Grand Central,” Rhiow said, as they walked down the air together, glancing around at the plaza, where the upset ehhif were slowly regaining their composure. “If he’s going to covet something of mine, let it be an informed covet.”

At ground level they glanced around, then made their way toward the archway that led back to the parking lot.“Sounding a little possessive today…” Urruah said.

Rhiow hissed under her breath as they made their way under the arch, past a group of ehhif in broad hats, tuning up stringed instruments.“Aaah. ‘Ruah, it’s just that he’s so obvious about it sometimes… and so willful about ignoring the facts: as if Ffairh and I were in some kind of cosmic plot with the Powers that Be to deny him his Iau-given rights. As if any of us would have time for such a thing, let alone inclination–”

They strolled over to where Arhu was sitting by the glowing lines of a completed transit circle, all neatly done inside a single parking space well off to one side of the parking lot. Siffha’h was sitting in the middle of the circle and glowing slightly around the edges herself, an indicator that she had the wizardry powered up and ready to go, with herself as power source. As Rhiow and Urruah paced up to the circle, Siffha’h said, “Did you see the way he was staring at you?”

Rhiow glanced over at her.“’He?’” she said. “You little eavesdropper, haven’t I told you before this to stay out of my head?” She took a not-very-serious swipe at Siffha’h’s head. “Powerful you may be, but be responsible about it: leave your teammates their privacy. And ‘he’ who? Jath? As if I care.”

“Jath!” Siffha’h let out a hiss of derision. “That dried-up old hairball? I meant Hwaith.”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t notice it,” Arhu said, as Rhiow stepped into the circle and sat down on the small sub-circle marked out for her. “He just sat there twitching and staring, like he couldn’t take his eyes off you.”

Rhiow jerked her tail in dismissal, then wrapped it around her feet where she sat.“Oh please! I’ve spent half the day, already, feeling as if everyone’s staring at me. I’m starting to think I put my ears on backwards when I got up. And as for Hwaith, he was watching me because I was the one who’d be making the decision. Yes, he was twitchy, but why wouldn’t he be? Nobody dares stay out of their proper time for very long: things get damaged.”

“And usually,” Urruah said, walking around the circle and checking the structure of the spell, “the first damage is to you. That’d be enough by itself to put his fur up. But also–” He looked at Arhu. “Think about it. Who likes going years out of his way to admit something’s going onthat he can’t handle, and then having to ask for help?” Hearing the gender-specific pronouns, Rhiow glanced down at the bark as if wondering where her clawmarks should have been, and very much avoided putting her whiskers forward in amusement. “I get the sense he doesn’t like time travel much, either.”

“None too fond of it myself,” Siffha’h muttered.

“Well, you’d best get that way,” Rhiow said, “since the Whisperer seems to feel it’s what we need to be doing right now.” She sighed, then, for as she looked down at the spell-symbols surrounding her personalized part of the transit circle, she realized she was going to need to brush upon the conditional tenses and plug-in syntaxes that the Speech used to deal with travel back and forth through time. Arhu had all the pertinent symbology laid out here, probably having saved it from their last paratemporal work, but it didn’t do to rely too completely on someone else’s transcription of your personality data. They might transpose a character, somewhere along the line, and inadvertently change your nature. Not the best way to start a job…

“Is it all right?” Arhu said.

He didn’t exactly sound uncertain– that wasn’t in his style– but Rhiow knew he was being careful, which was a development worth reinforcing. She put her whiskers forward. “Mine seems to be in order,” she said, “and nicely done. ’Ruah?”

Urruah was standing in the middle of his circle, carefully checking the strung-out Speech-characters that defined his subsidiary branch of the spell.“Looks fine,” he said. “You’re getting the hang of this, youngster. A lot less clutter in the design than there used to be.”

Arhu looked smug, sitting down in his own section.“Told you so,” he muttered to Siffha’h.

“Yeah, well, the way I wanted to do it was better. If you’d taken that last set of conditionals and combined them with–”

“Can we please just pop?” Urruah said. “You two can go back to shredding each other’s egos after we get where we’re going.”

Rhiow flicked an ear at him in amusement and reached over the border of her own circle to put a paw down on the nearest control structure. The words of the wizardry flared up around them into fierce contrast with the cracked and oil-stained blacktop underfoot.“Ready?” she said.

The other three looked down at the spell diagram, began to recite along with her. All around them, the sounds of L.A. traffic, the sound of the mariachi band starting to play in the Olvera Street plaza, the distant scream of a jet overhead, began to thin and fade to nothing in the silence that always accompanied the universe starting to listen to a spell. Their words in the Speech filled that silence to overflowing, spilled out of it, drowned it in colorless fire–

And then both fire and silence were gone, with the circle, and both light and air around them were utterly changed. Rhiow put her nose up into a wind that had nothing to do with their transit, and breathed deep. It was blowing toward them from the westward, and it smelled of the Sea.

They were standing to one side of the entrance to yet another parking lot. This one, though, was very unlike the Olvera Street parking lot, which had been hemmed in by buildings, old and new, on all sides. This space was broad, bare, and bright in the sun, under the hazy blue sky. Pale concrete painted with parking stripes stretched away from them on all sides. Directly in front of them, as they looked westward, was a broad arch– two fifteen-foot pitch-pine poles spanned by a long carved signboard that said:

SANTA MONICA MOUNTAINS NATIONAL RECREATION AREA— SATWIWA

Rhiow glanced around. Under her feet she could feel a strange trembling sensation, almost a buzzing. It was like a stronger version of the peculiar uncertainty she’d felt in her limbs in the plaza tree.

“What’s a Satwiwa?” Siffha’h said, looking up at the sign.

“Some ehhif placename,” Urruah said. “Never mind that. Feel it, Rhi?”

How could I not? Rhiow thought. That sense of terrible uncertainty coming up out of the ground felt like it was shouting right down her bones.“Is it the last earthquake we’re feeling,” she said, “or the next one?”

“I don’t think it’s either,” Arhu said.

Siffha’h’s ears flicked back, then forward. “Ahead of us,” she said. “That’s where the power is…”

“Come on,” Urruah said.

Inside the arch, there were only a few cars parked here and there, and no sign of the ehhif who’d left them. Urruah in the lead, the four wizards trotted past the cars to a sidewalk that surrounded the parking lot. This led to a beaten-down dirt trail winding off through an upsloping grassy meadow dotted here and there with stands of taller grasses and brush.

“A long way up…” Arhu said under his breath. Several miles further along the way the path ran, foothills clad in dark-green chaparral and sagebrush rose toward a mountain studded with outcroppings of red stone. The peak was bare; high above it, small winged dots circled in the haze-blue sky, working an early updraft.

“We don’t have to go up there,” Siffha’h said. She shot off across the meadow northwestward, a small black and white shape bounding through the grass. With a racketing clap and clatter of wings, a covey of small plump brown and white birds burst up out of the waving green-gold of the longest grass. Ignoring them, Arhu ran hot on Siffha’h’s track, and Rhiow and Urruah after him; and as they plunged past underneath the fleeing quail, Rhiow had to laugh at herself, because for all her unease, her mouth still watered to see them go.

“Haven’t I been telling you there was more to life than canned cat food,” Urruah said as she galloped along beside him.

“Don’t tempt me,” Rhiow said. “They had those in the Market this other morning, roasted and ready to go–”

“Did they now! Must stop by there on the way home. I know the roast-poultry lady.”

“Of course you do,” Rhiow said, resigned.

“And by the way, why are we running?”

“Because she is?” Rhiow said, as ahead of them Siffha’h started to slow, and Arhu caught up with her. “Because it’s a nice day for it?”

Siffha’h, though, had now paused, and was sniffing around in the grass. Rhiow could see her briefly paw at the ground, then look up again, and her expression wasn’t that of someone who’d been running for enjoyment. As Arhu caught up with her, and then Urruah and Rhiow, she glanced around at them. “The power was here,” Siffha’h said. “But it’s moved…”

“The earthquake?” Rhiow said. Standing here, she could feel it burning in the ground through the pads of her paws. But as Siffha’h had said, she couldn’t tell whether it was the quake just past, or some tremor in the future.

Arhu’s tail was lashing now. “No,” he said. “Something to do with it, though. Something involved with the earthquake was here. Something that wants to be here again…” He straightened up, looking around him with the same kind of questing expression. “The water,” he said. “It’s here somewhere nearby. Once we find the water, we’ll be close–”

He and Siffha’h ran off northwestward again through the long pale golden grass. Rhiow and Urruah watched them go for a moment, then started after them. After the rather unnerving morning, this interlude was a relief: and as she and Urruah followed the younger wizards, Rhiow found herself less troubled by the feeling of quake-trying-to-happen in the ground beneath her, and increasingly fascinated by the sense of old overlays, the remnant energy from wizardries done in this area over centuries, even millennia. Any place where wizards worked repeatedly over time acquired such: but the ones Rhiow felt underher now as she and Urruah trotted off in the youngsters’ wake seemed to lie very light in the ground, for ehhif work– at least in contrast with the concrete-and-steel wizardly environment where Rhiow normally worked. In Manhattan, the remnants of the vigorous and aggressive ehhif wizardries of the last few centuries were more likely to have embedded themselves in concrete than in the underlying bedrock…and henceforth were susceptible over time to having been simply jackhammered up or knocked down, and carted away. Here, though, beneath the insistent buzzing of recent or soon-to-be earthquake in the ground, Rhiow was getting a sense of old earth layered deep in wizardries faded down faint, buried stratum on stratum in ground which had been continuously inhabited by the same people since the Ice withdrew, or earlier. She was reminded of the feel of the ground near the little worldgate in Chur, in the Alps, which had been there since ehhif Bronze-Age days: but those overlays had been noisy and assertive compared to these.

“It’s pretty up here,” Urruah said as he trotted along beside her, glancing off to one side, where a lone queen-ehhif in hiking boots and shorts and T-shirt could be seen wandering along the bark-chipped path to one side. “Pity we don’t have places like this in New York.”

“Oh, come on, of course we do!” Rhiow said. “Go out on the Island, into the winery country. Or out by Montauk Point. Or up to the Poconos..”

Urruah wrinkled his nose, pausing a moment to sniff at a tall leggy bush with long yellow flowers.“Those aren’t New York New York, though,” he said.

Rhiow swung her tail broadly from one side to the other, conceding the point, as they paused to look at a low slant-roofed wooden building off to one side. Arhu and Siffha’h had already run past it, unconcerned: Rhiow stopped to glance at the ehhif characters on a carved sign to one side, then shrugged her tail and went after them. “Since when are you so concerned about ehhif boundaries? And even if you are, what about Coney Island? Or the bottom of the big runway at Kennedy, where it goes into the marsh in Jamaica Bay.” She stopped a moment by a flower bed to rub her face against a downhanging stalk of some spiny, sharp-scented plant, greeting it, and got a sap-slow acknowledgement from the life inside. “But if it’s this kind of quiet you’re looking for,” Rhiow said, flirting her tail and walking on in the direction the youngsters had gone, “you know you’re still not going to find it there. Too much mental background noise from all the lives pushed so tightly together for so long. You want the Poles, or the Moon, where you can hear theplanet think…”

They went past the little building along a curved, paved path and suddenly found themselves looking at something odd. In the shadow of a very small hill, out in the middle of some parched looking grass, stood a hut perhaps thirty Person’s-paces wide, built of rushes or reeds, its outer layers shingled down over one another in a series of graceful curves. In front of the hut’s single low door was a wide circle of stumps of age-silvered wood and blocks of stone of varying heights and shapes. In the center of it was another smaller circle of stones, and a further scatter of rocks in the center of it all, some fire-blackened. “At least you’re sounding a little calmer,” he said.

“Not sure I feel that way yet,” Rhiow said. She stretched her neck up a little to try to see where Arhu and Siffha’h had gone: they’d vanished into the tall grass past the hut, apparently on their way up the hillside. “I guess it’s just wizards’ syndrome. You get so used to being ableto reason with everything, or at least persuade it. But this is one of the situations where sheer scale gets in the way…”

They trotted past the ring and toward the hillside.“I suppose I can see the Earth’s point,” Urruah said. “We think we’re so important. But what’re we to the world? A minor skin condition. Why should it care about us? It has its own priorities. Tides, gravity, plates sliding… And if a flea starts shouting at you to stop scratching, do you listen?”

Rhiow put her whiskers forward.“It wouldn’t be high on my list.”

“But still,” Urruah said, “we’re wizards. It’s our job to listen, isn’t it?”

“The next time I see you scratching, I’ll remind you,” Rhiow said, “and we’ll see what you do.” She paused where the slope before them started to get steeper, and the grass longer. “Where’ve those two gotten to now?”

We found the water, Arhu said. There’s a waterfall up higher. But that’s not important. We found a cave, up the hillside about forty leaps, in between two big stones. And somebody’s been doing wizardry in here!

“Oh really,” Rhiow said. “How recently?”

A week or so ago, Siffha’h said. Maybe a little longer, but not much.

“What kind of wizardry?” Rhiow said.

“Uh oh,” Urruah said then, looking behind them.

Someone had come out of the low round hut, and was standing there looking around: a queen-ehhif in dark pants and a short-sleeved blue shirt.“Doesn’t matter,” Rhiow said, looking uphill again as the ehhif walked off around the hut, “we’re sidled. Sif?”

Rhiow heard her hesitating. Not sure I like the look of this, Siffha’h said.

“Why? What’s the matter?”

I can feel what’s left of the spell in the stone, Siffha’h said. It’s full of geological constants– local ones, with really fine adjustments on them. And there were three or four power conduits leading out of the spell and sunk into the rock underneath the mountain.

“A diagnostic?” Rhiow said.

I don’t think so, Siffha’h said, and she was beginning to sound angry. This doesn’t look like someone trying to find out what the earth’s been doing. This looks like someone trying to make it do something–

Rhiow went chilly inside. It wasn’t as if wizards never made mistakes, or did stupid things: but messing around with the earth’s structure in a place where it was already unstable enough struck her as foolhardy. “That’s really odd,” Rhiow said. “Let’s see what you’ve got. ‘Ruah–” She started up the hill.

“Rhi,” Urruah said from behind her, “while we’re on the subject of ‘odd’, you might want to have a look–”

Rhiow turned around. The she-ehhif who’d come out of the hut was heading straight toward them through the grass.

Rhiow glanced over her shoulder to see what the ehhif might be looking at instead of her— but there was nothing there but more of the long grass. Rhiow looked back at the queen-ehhif, ready to run or vanish if necessary, but it was hard to imagine why it would be necessary. The ehhif didn’t look particularly dangerous: she was very small as humans went, with long dark hair tied back, a low belt hanging down over her trousers to one side–

And, hanging holstered from that belt, a gun. Rhiow opened her mouth, prepared to say a single word in the Speech, the trigger for the run-and-hide spell that lay, as usual, ready at the back of her brain. As she did, the ehhif stopped and gazed up the hill, as if seeing something there that she hadn’t expected. Then she looked down at Rhiow.

“Excuse me,” the ehhif said, “but are you People looking for something, or are you lost?” And she said it in the Speech.

Rhiow and Urruah stared at each other. Then Rhiow put her whiskers forward.“Lost!” she said. “Hardly! But looking for something, yes: though until a few moments ago, we weren’t expecting to find another wizard here. Is that your spell up there?”

“Yes,” the ehhif said. “Sorry if it looks alarming at first glance: it’s specialized stuff. Anyway, I’m on errantry: haku, cousins!” She sat down in the grass. “In fact, I suspect you’re why I was sent here. I’m called Helen: Helen Walks Softly.”

Urruah sat down, his whiskers forward too.“You could have fooled me,” he said.

“Wouldn’t have been polite to sneak up on you,” Helen said. “You might’ve gotten the wrong idea. May I ask names?”

“My colleague here is Urruah,” Rhiow said. “The youngsters up the hill are Arhu and Siffha’h. : I’m Rhiow– I lead the New York worldgating teams.”

Helen blinked at that.“Worldgating?” she said. “Were you sent here by assignment?”

“We were in L.A. on a consult,” Rhiow said, “but when was a wizard’s casual business ever completely casual? The Powers find ways not to waste our efforts.”

Helen gave Rhiow a wry look.“I hear you there, sister,” she said. “I was going to come by to check the parking lot before I turned in. There’s been a wave of burglaries the past couple of weeks: people breaking into parked cars, or trying to vandalize the interpretive center or the ap.” She nodded back toward the hut. “Nothing going on today, fortunately. But then the Earth moved. What a relief! I checked the center and the ap to make sure they were all right in the aftermath…and then I smelled power passing through. Thought I’d better take a look.”

What are you talking to down there? Arhu’s thought came, sounding a little spooked.

She’s a wizard, Rhiow said silently. Get yourselves down here and greet her properly. “Probably you felt Siffha’h,” she said. “She’s been doing powersource work with us lately, and she’s still running at post-Ordeal levels. So is Arhu, for that matter…so I suppose it could have been either of them.”

Urruah was looking a little dubiously at Helen’s gun. “You wouldn’t have needed that to deal with burglars, though–”

Helen nodded.“On my own time, of course not. But I came straight here from work, as I said.” She reached into her pocket and brought out a wallet, flipped it open. The bright sun glinted on the badge there.

“L.A.P.D.?” Urruah said.

“That’s right.” Helen put the wallet away, glancing up the hill at the waving of the grass as Arhu and Siffha’h came bounding down. “Not that an armed officer would be allowed here without permission. But I have dispensation, since this is my tribal ground.”

Rhiow’s eyes widened at that. “You’re one of the ffih-ehhif,” she said, “the First Humans–”

“That’s right,” Helen said, as Arhu and Siffha’h came out of the grass nearby. “My people are the Chumash: this is all our land, here along the shoreline, from Santa Barbara down to the City.”

“I guess other ehhif would say it ‘was’ your land,” Urruah said.

Helen threw an amused glance at him.“It still is,” she said, “in all the ways that matter. Not that most of them would notice.” She grinned. “We’re still here: and we take care of things the best we can. Haku, young cousins–”

There was a pause while introductions were made and names exchanged: but even afterwards, Siffha’h was still wearing a suspicious look. “That spell up there–” she said. “Just what exactly were you doing?”

“’Letting the earthquake off the leash,’” Helen said. “Triggering a controlled tremor. Or trying to.”

“’Trying’?” Arhu said, looking at her oddly. “I thought ‘a spell always works.’”

“It does if a force equaling or surpassing the power of the wizardry isn’t being purposefully leveled against it,” Helen said. “Which seems to have been the case lately, and I haven’t been able to understand what that force was. Finally I asked my ikhareya about it, and He said He didn’t know either. He said, ‘Go have a look, and some of your cousins will come along and help you find out what the answer was…’” Helen looked a little bemused. “He was using a temporal-conditional tense, though. There’s going to be an answer…but it’s in the past?”

“That’s what we were told,” Rhiow said. “We’re on our way there after this.”

“Do you mind if I go with you, then?” Helen said. “Seems like that’s what’s required…”

“You’re more than welcome on the journey,” Urruah said, “believe me. It’s a relief to know we’re not going to have to do this all by ourselves, anyway…whatever ‘this’ is.”

“We’re going to set up a separate portal for the timeslide,” Rhiow said. “We don’t want to take the chance of deranging the L.A. gate: it’s already acting badly enough. Would there be a problem if we gated from here? Or might it interfere with your spell up in the cave?”

Helen shook her head.“It’s built to stay completely quiescent until someone it recognizes activates it,” she said. “I’ll kill its sensor components to make sure it doesn’t get confused.”

“Is that going to be enough to keep such a complex spell out of trouble?” Siffha’h said. “And one so old? You don’t sink power conduits like those overnight.”

“Of course not,” Helen said. “The basic wizardry’s a fixture: a team of our shamans sang it into place hundreds of years ago. But, yes, just pulling the sensor web out of contact will work fine– that’s how we keep it quiet when we’re not actually using it. Wizards who know this terrain well, or have a connection to it, come up and at least once a week to bleed off some of the excess force, the way you start small controlled brushfires every now and then to keep a really big forest fire from destroying everything wholesale. I’ve taken over this job, the last couple of years, because my connection to this terrain’s much better than that of any other wizard around here. This is my native space, after all: the Chumash have lived here since before the Ice.”

Helen sighed and stretched out her legs in front of her.“But I might as well come from Dubuque, for all the good that spell’s done me lately. Over the last two weeks, I must have run it seven or eight times, trying to provoke any old kind of local discharge, especially from the big fault right under the mountain. But it just wasn’t working.” Shelooked up at the mountain as if she could see straight into it. “It was driving me nuts. I could feel the power building up, but I just couldn’t bleed it off. It was almost like something was leaning against the fault, holding the force in…” Helen shrugged. “But then this morning, around when I went off duty, it seemed like something blinked, and the fault let loose. Good thing, too.”

Rhiow thought of Hwaith’s description of something leaning against the world, and the fur started to rise on her back. “Yes, you said you were relieved,” Rhiow said. “Forgive me, but after what I’ve been through this morning, the word seems a little unusual…” She shook herself all over, trying to get the fur to lie down again.

Helen nodded.“Your first time? I understand you. But maybe you’ve had enough time here to feel the ground a little–” She put her hand down on the grassy ground beside her. “This whole area’s coming down with faults, and microquakes are an everyday occurrence. Just in these ten square miles or so, we’ve got the Chatsworth fault to the north, and the Bailey Fault west of us, and the Malibu Fault running south of us along the coastline, and two big ones running right under Boney Mountain–” she waved at the bare peak looming above them westward–”so it’s not so much ‘have you had an earthquake today?’ as ‘how did you miss having one’.” She shook her head. “Mostly they’re so tiny you don’t feel them. But it’s still really strange for us to go so long here without even a minor tremor. It was giving me the jitters…and the ikhareya wasn’t happy either. At least nowI can relax a little. At least until we find out what’s causing this problem, anyway.”

“You didn’t feel anything from the quakes down in L.A., then?” Rhiow said.

Helen shook her head.“I had to hear about them on the news, in the car, on my way home from work.” Then she chuckled at Urrauh’s expression. “Urruah, I’m all for connectedness to the land, and taking care of the environment, but if I did my grocery shopping via gating circle, that people would notice.”

Urruah’s tail wreathed gently. “Aha,” he said. “Is that where you were? I thought I smelled chicken–”

I am going to give you such a whack when we’re in private, Rhiow said silently. “Well,” Rhiow said, “maybe we should get our slide set up. Our backtime contact, Hwaith, gave us the coordinates we need, and we’ve got all the necessary authorizations.”

“I see that,” Helen said, standing up and dusting her hands off on her pants: she was looking upslope, into the wind. “From fairly deep in, too. Whatever’s going on, this is fairly serious…” She looked down at Rhiow. “And it doesn’t seem to be our usual enemy involved with this, does it? The Kemish, the Old Bad One… Or at least that’s not the feeling I’m getting.”

“I’d say you’d be right,” Rhiow said, “and I wish I knew what to make of that. Meanwhile, do you want to nominate a spot where we can anchor the slide?”

“If we go upslope a quarter mile or so,” Helen said, “past the cave, that’ll take us well away from the beaten path. There’s a place where the hillside shelves out flat for a little bit.”

“Arhu?” Rhiow said. “You two go on and get it set up. And ask Aufwi to come up here as soon as he’s finished making the L.A. gate safe and shutting it down.”

Siffha’h and Arhu headed up the hill, but not before Arhu had thrown an odd look over his shoulder at Helen. “Sorry,” Rhiow said. “You’ve got to excuse him: he has trouble with ehhif sometimes. He was abused by them, almost killed, when he was very young.”

“It’s no problem,” Helen said. “We all have our burdens. Believe me, I have problems with some of my fellow ehhif, occasionally.” She smiled a little ruefully as they started up the hill. “All just part of the Game, my ikhareya says…”

“I was going to ask you about that,” Urruah said as they headed upwards through the long grass. “I heard the word you used, and Herself gave me the closest cognate in the Speech at the same time. You have one of the Powers that Be for your own?”

Helen blinked, then laughed.“Uh, no! No one could own one of Them. I’ve just got a close personal connection to one of Them: lots of wizards who’re native Americans do. It’s like yours to– I think you call Her ‘the Whisperer?’”

“That’s right,” Rhiow said. “You hear wizardry through your connection, then–”

Helen’s look was a touch sheepish. “Oh, no, I still use a written Manual a lot of the time. I was born and raised in the Valley, in Encino: I didn’t really start getting to know my tribal life until a few years ago, after I finished college and went into the Force. But I’ve been really busy up here since then, since it turns out the old shaman needed to train a new one before he went West. As usual, there aren’t any coincidences…”

From above and ahead of them came a soft pop!, the sound of someone trying to minimize the air displacement from his appearance“out of nothing”. There stood Aufwi on the flattened space that Helen had described, his head and shoulders silhouetted against the blue. “Do you know Aufwi?” Rhiow said, as they came up on the level. “He handles the L.A. gate.”

“Sure, I see him downtown every now and then. Haku, Aufwi, how’s it going?”

“A lot better than it was earlier, believe me,” he said as they came up and out onto the shelf that lay under the lee of the hill. The shelf was mostly hard dirt strewn with rockfall, and shadowed from the sun by a slope now more nearly a cliff, all studded with outcroppings of brown and goldenstone. In a relatively bare spot off to one side, nearly into the sun again, the glow of a complex spell-circle lay spread across the ground, and Arhu and Siffha’h were was pacing around it, looking it over.

No way they could have done that from scratch just now, Urruah said silently to Rhiow, going over to examine the circle. They’ve been practicing for this! For how long, I wonder?

Arhu’s got the Eye, Rhiow said, and I’ve been sure for some time that he doesn’t tell us everything he foresees. Who knows when he might have seen this? It’s handy now…

Aufwi came over to Rhiow.“All’s secure back at the Station now,” he said.

“The gate’s locked down?” Rhiow said.

“Absolutely.”

“You’re sure this time?” Urruah said.

Aufwi looked a little annoyed.“I yanked every power connection but its standby. If it can function in spite of that–”

Rhiow put her tail up against Aufwi’s. “He’s teasing you, Aufwi,” she said. “Ignore him. Once we’ve slid back to where and when we need to be, and had a look at Hwaith’s gate, you can use that to jump forward to ‘now’ again– then wake yours up and lock it on a nearby set of coordinates to do your comparison.”

“Exactly what I had in mind.”

“Good,” Rhiow said, and followed Urruah over to the circle. Helen came behind them, looking over the complex series of nested and interlocking circles and ellipses, either containing long sentences in the Speech or being comprised of them. She nodded at what she saw. “Done without any physical elements at all?” she said. “Very slick.”

“Now why would we use concrete spatial interruptors? Chips and batteries and so on?” Siffha’h put her ears back in disdain. “Inelegant. A brute-force solution.”

“Plugins and carry-ons,” Arhu said, looking smugly around the circle, “are for newbies.”

“Oh, yeah, well, plug this in, oh expert one,” Urruah said, and took a swipe at Arhu in passing as he went to his own. “Must be nice to know everything so young.”

“He just sees everything,” Siffha’h said, resuming her prowl around the circle, and eyeing the spell diagram with care. “Whereas I–”

She ducked just in time for Rhiow’s paw went through the air where her head had been. “You see what I put up with,” Rhiow said to Helen, and started to pace around the circle after Siffha’h. “But I see they’ve been quick and added a circle for you, Helen. Is it big enough?”

“Looks fine.”

“Then you’ll want to add in your personal data. Sif, let’s have a look at the coordinates–”

“Over here,” Siffha’h said. She had laid the spatial and temporal fixes into a small inner circle of their own. Rhiow put a paw down on each of the sets of coordinates in sequence, seeing each group of words and characters in the Speech glow bright in turn. She closed her eyes for a moment toregard her own mental “workspace” and the copy of the coordinates that the Whisperer had left there. “The time’s right,” Rhiow said. “As for the location–”

“The other side of the Hollywood Hills,” Aufwi said, “near Mount Cahuenga. Hwaith’s put us a good ways from where he said the quake activity was occurring.”

“All right,” Rhiow said. She stepped into the spot she could see had been marked out for her, and bent down to check her name and her personality data: it was all as it should have been. “Let’s go, then. Everybody check your info one last time. Then let’s slide.” Rhiow looked at the anchor-end duration data written in the center of the circle. “The slide’s got a five-minute return aperture: short enough so we don’t have to worry about leaving it for this brief period, and plenty wide enough to give us room to come back and forth several times, if we have to, without meeting ourselves unnecessarily.” She looked around.

Siffha’h settled herself in her customary place, the central “powersource” circle that would drive the wizardry as a whole: Arhu was nearby in a separate circle of his own, watching the spell’s progress indicators. Urruah sat in his own circle opposite Rhiow’s, out at the edge, where he could keep an eye on things. Aufwi and Helen settled themselves into their circles on either side of Rhiow.

“Ready?” she said.

Tails were waved, ears put forward, one head nodded.“Let’s go, then,” Rhiow said, and looked down.

The initial words of the spell burned bright in front of her and all the others. All together, they began to read, and the world leaned in to hear. This is a timeslide inauguration. Claudication type unmiq-beth-quaternary-five with reflection, authorization groups–

Instead of the usual growing, listening silence, a sense of inward pressure began to build around them all, as the inbuilt persuasiveness of the language that had made the world now started talking the“now” out of being the present, and into becoming the past.

Rhiow had done timeslides before, and had occasionally been disconcerted by the strange sense of bring frozen in one moment while the fragmented thought processes of thousands of other nearby minds, all caught in the moment she was departing, seemed to come avalanching past her as she was pulled away into the past. But it was different here. Though all the Earth’s surface is old, as the beings living on its surface reckon time, this spot seemed far older than usual because of how long human beings had lived here continuously. While the thoughts of tens of thousands of nearby ehhif preoccupied with work and rent and cars and food and phone conversations poured past them and were swiftly lost, it wasn’t silence that began to replace them, but a long slow sound or rhythm like a chant, like a long memory of all the lives that had ever been here, all heard together. Only some of the minds involved in that rhythm were human: and under the low throb ofthe sound, counterpoint to it, a long rich unfading gong-note of some near-immortal point of view seemed to run at the roots of everything. The Powers? Rhiow thought. The Earth itself? There was no telling. And then it was too late to try to tell: the pressure grew and grew as they were squeezed out of their own time, into another–

Suddenly the pressure itself started to become too much to bear. There in the debatable territory between times, Rhiow found herself unable to breathe, almost unable to think, for the sense of something pushing in on her— not the spell but something outside it, not time but something outside it: something bearing down on her, hard, and intending to bear down in such wise on everything else if only it could. It was as terrible in its sheer crushing weight as a mountain’s weight of stone would have been— and impersonal in ways not even stone could manage. She could sense consciousness, yes, but also a vast chilly uncaring that was in its way far worse than any sense of active evil. Worse than the Lone One, Rhiow heard Hwaith saying in her mind, as she gasped for breath and couldn’t find any. Far worse — Oh, Iau help me, he was right, what do we do now — ?!

And then she was flung down hard on stony ground, on a slope, and rolled a few feet before she came to a stop, bruised and almost embarrassed enough not to care that she could breathe again. No cat likes falling without even having had a chance to try to get her feet under her. Rhiow got up angry, shaking herself, her tail lashing.

“Welcome to L.A.,” Hwaith said out of the darkness.

Growling under their breaths, or muttering, she could hear the others getting up. Rhiow stared around her hurriedly, still blinded by contrast with the day from which they’d come. And then she heard Helen say:

“Holy Coyote, what’s happened to the light?…”

The Big Meow: Chapter Four

Rhiow looked down the length of the valley where they stood, into a hazy darkness that glittered faintly. Spread out before them like a broad carpet, stretching away to a dimly-seen horizon, were city lights; but the color of the glittering light was strangely white and cool, and not nearly as bright as she would have expected. As Rhiow watched, the light seemed to dim almost to nothing in patches, then brighten again. Rhiow realized she was seeing the city’s light through a haze of what at first glance looked like low cloud.

Just behind her, Arhu was sniffing.“Smog,” he said under his breath.

Helen let out a long breath, looking around her.“Even before there were cars and factories,” Helen said, “the People living down there called it ‘the Valley of the Smokes…’. The inversion layer’ll hold anything down that comes up from sea level: even our campfires were enough to do it.” She shook her head, looking down the valleyagain. “And it’s a long time before the clean-air legislation starts to cut in. But there’s still a lot more in the air than just hydrocarbons and ozone…”

Rhiow, scenting it, had to agree. It was strange to be right above a city, and yet be standing in air so strongly scented with orange blossom, almond blossom, citrus, the corky, woody scent of walnut…

“And I see what it is now,” Helen said, sitting down on a nearby fallen trunk of a scrub oak. “About the light. It’s strange not to see the sodium-vapor lights we’ve got in our own time. You get used to city light being a lot brighter, and very orange…”

“Sodium vapor?” Hwaith, sitting nearby in the shadow of a manzanita, flirted his tail. “No, those are a good ways downtime from us, I’d say. The ehhif here are using incandescent bulbs with little tin reflectors over them.”

“I’m a little disoriented,” Rhiow said to Hwaith. “I think I smell morning coming, but it’s hard to tell – “

“You’re right,” Hwaith said. “The Eye will be up in about three hours, but the skyglow’s obscured by the mist this time of year, and the city lights confuse things. Downhill from is us southward. And over to the left is my badly-behaved friend…”

There, hanging and wavering gently in midair in the shadow of several skeletal gray-needled pines, was this time’s version of the LA gate. Rhiow looked at it for a moment, and got an odd feeling as she did so; there was something almost uneasy about the way it was rippling, not in the usual steady rhythm, but with a kind of shiver interfering intermittently with the ripples. “It doesn’t look right,” she said.

“No,” Urruah said, “it doesn’t. The chroma of the weft looks way off.” He glanced over at Aufwi. “You know this gate better than any of our group does, though – “

Aufwi lashed his tail.“Definitely looks sickly,” he said. “Much too blue in the crests of those ripples. It’s a look mine’s been getting lately…”

“I’ve seen that blueshift before,” Rhiow said, getting up again and going over for a closer look. “You get it when something’s interfering with a gate’s control structures…usually some change in the local matrix it’s sunk into. In this case, it’s sunk into a spot it wasn’t intended to be, and the last group of settings are arguing with the new location.”

“More than that,” Urruah said. “See the way the waves are canceling each other here and there?” He sat up on his haunches, looking at the gate. “Two, three…four places. Hwaith, your problem child’s trying to put down more roots.”

“It kept trying to do that before,” Hwaith said, sounding furious. “That’s why I was reluctant to leave it for even such a short time.”

“We’ll pull them up,” Urruah said, “and then try to get a sense of why it’s doing this. May I?”

“Please,” Hwaith said, “don’t stand on ceremony! You’ve come a long way to do just that. Just tell me if you need help.”

Rhiow put her whiskers forward, relieved that Hwaith wasn’t going to get all possessive; all she needed right now was to find herself at the wrong end of time with another version of Jath on her paws. “Now,” she said, “all we have to do is find out why this has been starting to happen to your gate, so that we can keep it from happening to ours…”

Not‘all’, said the quiet voice in the back of Rhiow’s head.

Rhiow flicked an ear. Hwaith gave her an odd look as she turned away from him. Whisperer, she said silently, if you have any hints for me, now’s the time.

No hints today, said the Mistress of the Whispering. We’re all in the dark here together. If you turn up anything that seems germane to the Powers, believe me, I’ll mention it. But none of our first guesses or assumptions are likely to be good enough to rely on; and finding out what lies at the root of this gate’s trouble, and yours, is going to make all the difference between life and…something else..

Rhiow licked her nose several times, very fast, as the Silent One fell silent again.“Sorry — ” she said to Hwaith, turning back to him.

“She doesn’t sound very encouraging, does She,” he said.

“You caught that?”

He flicked his tail in a gesture of mild annoyance, looked away.“I do hear things, unfortunately,” Hwaith said. “It was my first specialty after Ordeal: not the Eye, but the Ear. I could never really control it, though, which is why I went into gate work as soon as there was an opening.” He looked at Rhiow again, apologetic. “Please excuse me: it’s not intentional…and when She speaks in that tone of voice, it’s hard to avoid hearing Her.”

“I wouldn’t argue that point,” Rhiow said, looking away to watch Urruah reach out and sink his claws into the edges of the gate’s weft, hooking them into its control webs. He pulled, and the predictable tangled lines of light stretched out and away from the gate proper. “Is it just me,”Rhiow said, “or do those threads look…I don’t know…thinner than usual?”

“It’s not just you,” Hwaith said. He licked his nose once or twice, nervous: and Aufwi looked over at Rhiow and Hwaith and said, “This is something my gate’s been doing too. It’s been sporadic, though, and I haven’t been able to get it to repeat so that I can do a diagnostic…”

“Got some trouble here,” Urruah said then, and the steady way he said it brought the fur up all over Rhiow.

“What?” she said, getting up and trotting over.

“No,” Urruah said, “nothing you need to do anything about right this second. We’re going to need a few extra paws in a little bit, though.” He bent in close, seized a bundle of the glowing gate-strings in his teeth, and reached in with the freed-up paw to hook another tangle of them with his claws. “This thing hasn’t just put down one root. It’s got five now.”

Hwaith hissed, swearing in helpless anger.“It’s not going to do any good pulling them up one at a time,” he said. “It’ll just re-root one of them while we’re working on the next.”

“We can each take one,” Rhiow said. “’Ruah, are the roots sinking themselves nearby?”

It looked as if the knotted mass of hyperstrings was resisting him, trying to snap back into the gate. He lashed his tail“no”. “They’re spread out,” he said. “South, east, southeast, southwest of here. Take a look – “

Urruah bit deeper into the hyperstring bundle he was holding in his teeth. Sudden bright strings of light shot out from the base and edges of the gateweave, seeming to lance down into the dimly glittering cityscape like laser light, the only difference being that physical objects didn’t stop them. They resumed on the other side, in one case going straight through a hillcrest and down into the landscape below.

“One’s a little stronger than the others,” he said. “That one going through the hill. Maybe it’s been there a touch longer – hard to tell. But they’re all going to have to come up at once.”

Rhiow flicked her tail.“How are you for power at the moment?” she said to Hwaith. “Did we catch you at the end of your work day, or the beginning?”

He let out a breath.“I’m tired enough,” he said, “but I won’t drop what I grab hold of a moment before anyone else does. Let’s go.”

“’Ruah, I’ll take that older root,” Rhiow said, heading over toward it. “Hwaith, the one next to mine, running down the canyon. Aufwi, the one past that. Arhu, the last one. Sif, you stand by and lend power if you sense anyone slipping.”

Everyone headed to the string Rhiow had indicated for each of them, and bit down on it or hooked their claws around it.“Can I do anything to help?” Helen said.

“Lend Sif a paw if there’s need,” Rhiow said. She bit down on her own string, pulling back a little and testing it. With the pull she got a clearer sense of the structures into which it was trying to root – the stone of some other hillside, cracked, unstable-feeling – and something else that concerned her more: an odd sour stink or flavor, unpleasant. It reminded Rhiow of something, but she couldn’t think what. And now it’s going to make me crazy for days until I remember. Where’s that coming from, though? You don’t usually get taste associations on hyperstrings — “Let us know when you’re set,” she said.

“Just a moment more,” Urruah said. All along and across the web of the gate, hyperstrings flickered and vibrated as if someone was plucking them; beads and streaks of multicolored fire chased up and down the threads as Urruah made final adjustments in the master web of the gate, securing its structure before starting to pull any roots loose. “All right,” he said then. “Everybody – pull!”

Rhiow set her teeth hard, ignoring the sudden increase in that odd stink, and started backing away from the gate. The string she was biting resisted her more aggressively, but she kept on backing away– this being only the physical component of the actual stress Rhiow was bringing to bear on the hyperstring, the pressure of the mind and of the necessary words in the Speech, all bent toward persuading it to give up, let go, stop being so attached… But the resistance increased. This attachmentsuits me, the string told her, in the stubborn, silent manner of a construct refusing to answer to the desires of a wizard who hadn’t put it there. I was told to root here, and here I will stay.

I have rightful authority over you, Rhiow thought in the Speech: I am sent to you on errantry by the Powers that Be, and it’s proper that you obey my intent! But the root-string was having none of it. It sought to anchor itself deeper in that down-canyon ground, even as Rhiow pulled at it. The strange muddy stink in her nostrils got stronger as it did, and Rhiow could also feel something else through the far end of the string – a shiver, a tremor, rumbling, growing: the memory of a recent earthquake. And one trying not to be just a memory –

She shivered all over, but she kept her grip. Around her she could sense the others having a similar problem: Urruah’s temper wanting to flare, but being suppressed; Arhu annoyed at anything being able to resist his intention, still unusually powerful in a wizard so near his Ordeal; Aufwi alarmed at the string’s refusal to respond: Hwaith surprisingly cool and certain as he stepped back and back with his ownstring. Well, it’s his own gate, after all. But he doesn’t seem to be having any better luck than the rest of us. This doesn’t look good —

From outside the group, Siff’hah said, “Rhiow – “

She was tempted to tell Siff’hah to throw all the power she had at one or another of the roots – for dividing her effort among them seemed unlikely to do much good at this point. But what if doing that unbalances the whole gateweave? It might tear loose and run out of control, like Aufwi’s did – Or else the gate mightjust tear apart, possibly even shred under the strain altogether. That didn’t bear thinking about, for worldgates, even a singleton gate like this one, had a tremendous amount of power wrapped up in them. Release all that energy at once, and local space and subspace were both at risk of becoming deranged – as was the matter they contained.

Either way, the tack they were taking at the moment apparently wasn’t getting them anywhere, and they were going to have to consider other possibilities. Sif, Rhiow said silently, start a mapping routine. We need to see in which exact spots those roots are sinking themselves, so we can go down there afterwards and understand the whys as well as the wheres. She was careful not to say After this doesn’t work: there was always the possibility something might yet give in their favor, that the gate would see sense and do as it was told —

Doing it now, Siff’hah said. Think we’re going to need it, too —

Rhiow said nothing. Her whole business at the moment was to hang onto her string and watch what Urruah did as he manipulated the strings held in teeth and claws. Her own words came back to her suddenly: I’m not going to do this job forever… She sank her teeth more tightly into her string, pulled harder. Now what made me say that to him right then? Maybe I was just tired. Yet one way or another, there was some truth to it. She might be a wizard until the day she kicked this life’s skin away behind her and moved on to the next one: but she wasn’t required to do the same kind of work all that while. Even specialties don’t have to be forever. And the Powers understand that sometimes you need a break from the routine —

That strange mind-stink from the hyperstring was beginning to bother her. Rhiow wanted mightily to sneeze, but that was the last thing she was going to allow herself to do at the moment, when it could upset someone else’s concentration. She wrinkled her nose, then her whole muzzle, in an attempt to disrupt the coming sneeze. It worked for a moment, but then the stink started to itch in her nostrils again. I will not, she thought, I will not, as Iau’s my witness, I will not –

“Anybody making any progress?” Urruah said, though from his tone of voice Rhiow thought he already knew the answer.

“Not moving!” Arhu said.

“The thing’s locked down,” Aufwi said. “Some kind of compulsion – “

Urruah glanced over at Hwaith. Hwaith, hanging on, simply lashed his tail angrily, tried to take one more step back, failed–

“Then ease up, all,” Urruah said. “Let’s stop and think – “

Everyone slowly started to give way to the backward pull of the gate-root he or she was holding. Rhiow could feel something peculiar down the string as she stopped exerting pressure against it: an odd sense of– not satisfaction, but relief. And not from the root, but from the gate itself: as if it knew perfectly well it was the object of contention between two different forces, and was glad to see the contention stop, because it was – frightened? Frightened, not of the other – but of us?

When Rhiow was close enough to the gate, she opened her jaws, and the root-string snapped back hard the instant she let it go. Urruah let go of the bundles of strings he was holding and dropped to his forefeet again, his ears back flat.

“Well,” Arhu said, “that was a whole lot of nothing! What’s the matter with the thing? Doesn’t it know we’re on its side, and it’s supposed to do what we ask it?”

“Good question,” Urruah said. He sat down, his tail lashing. “Something else for us to look into. Hwaith, has the gate been openly uncooperative this way with you before?”

“Never,” Hwaith said. He sounded mortified.

“Well, it doesn’t matter. I don’t think we should waste any more time trying to disengage those roots from here,” Urruah said. “Our effort’s being attenuated by our distance from the actual spaces they’re affecting.”

Rhiow flicked an ear in agreement.“We’re going to have to go to the separate locations where they’ve sunk themselves in,” she said, “and pull them up from there, one at a time. And while we do that, someone’s going to have to stay up here and keep the gate from putting down new roots in response. And if it does, try to get a sense of what’s making it behave that way.”

“I know its structures pretty well,” Aufwi said. “Probably that’s me.” He looked over at Hwaith. “If you don’t mind – “

Hwaith swung his tail“no”. “I think I’m more likely to be needed as a ‘native guide,’” he said.

Siff’hah came strolling over then, with Helen Walks Softly close behind. “I have your root locations for you,” she said to Rhiow, and put one white paw out a little ahead of her, resting it on a bare patch on the dusty reddish ground. From her paw, delicate lines of light fled away in all directions, describing in miniature a duplicate of the faintly glittering street-structure below them. They all gazed down at it, and Helen hunkered down by it and gazed down at the four small pulsing golden lights that burned on the little map. A larger white one pulsed up in the darkest part of the wizardly map, amid the hills.

“All right,” Helen said, pointing at the nearest of the golden lights south of them. “That one I know. That’s Hollywood Boulevard and – yeah, Highland Avenue, see the way it doglegs north of Franklin? There’s a lot of new building there now, but – “ and she waved a little further down the street-line to where that golden light burned – “that’s still where it belongs. Mann’s Chinese Theater.”

“You mean Grauman’s,” said Hwaith. “Who’s ‘Mann’?”

“Uh, long story,” Helen said.

“Au,” Urruah said, “Grauman’s — !” He went from wearing the ears-back expression of an annoyed gate technician to the whiskers-forward of some kind of excited arts fan, an expression Rhiow had seen a thousand times before. “You’re going to tell me that that they do opera there, I suppose,” she said.

Urruah turned one of those stricken, don’t-tell-me-you-have-no-idea-what-I’m-talking-about looks on her. “You’re kidding me,” he said, “surely! Even you have to have heard about the place – “

“Somehow the Whisperer neglected to bring me up to date,” Rhiow said, trying to sound severe.

“It’s a place where ffilhm was shown,” he said. “Maybe the greatest ffilhm showplace of this time. The ehhif stars would come here when their ffilhms were premiered, and walk down a red carpet, and put their handprints in cement – “

“And after all the trouble we went through to get them up off all fours,” Rhiow said, torn between annoyance and bemusement, “tell me why in Iau’s name they’re so eager to get down on them again? But, no, please, don’t tell me now, because I know it’s going to happen later no matter how I try to avoid it – “

“Hey, I had no idea you were a fan,” Hwaith said to Urruah, looking surprised. “When we get this gate settled, I’ll take you down there. I know some of the backstage toms. They keep asking me why don’t I– “

O Queen Iau, Rhiow thought, help me keep my claws sheathed and my temper in one piece! Is this why most of the really good gate techs are queens? Toms just can not focus for more than the time it takes to eat something or kill something– She opened her mouth.

Then Rhiow closed it again, as startled as everyone else by the sudden sound of Siff’hah hissing softly. Urruah and Hwaith both turned to stare at her. “I am not holding this imaging spell here for my health, you two!” Siff’hah said. “Hhel’hen, do you know what those other lights are, or are we going to have to stimulate these sheihss’s thought processes a little?”

Claws were now very visible jutting out from the paw that held the wizardry in place, and Sif’s eyes were pits of solid, furiously dilated darkness in the dim light. Helen leaned over the map, wearing what for an ehhif would have been only the smallest of smiles, as Urruah and Hwaith fell quite abruptly silent, and Arhu looked up into the darkness with an expression of complete innocenceand uninvolvement. Rhiow kept her whiskers back for the moment, though she was amused.

“Well, up here close to us – “ Helen was tracing one curving, switchbacking road with a forefinger: the road went bright where her finger had been. “This isn’t my normal patrol area: I’m normally down in Wilshire and Central, and these roads are hard to keep straight…but not many of them go all the way across to the Valley. So that has to be either Laurel Canyon or Coldwater Canyon…”

“It’s Laurel,” Hwaith said. He peered at the light that shone just off to one side of it. “That cross street, the little one running up the side canyon…that should be Prospect Trail… No, Highland Trail. Either way, it’s interesting, because that was the epicenter of two of our earthquakes last week…”

“Was it now,” Rhiow said softly, looking over his shoulder.

“Not much built up yet, by the looks of things,” Helen said.

“No. There are a few old houses, and a new mansion: some ehhif involved with real estate in the Midwest built that before the Hurw’sshehhif.” It was the Ailurin term for what ehhif called their Second World War.

“That’s going to be worth looking at, perhaps,” Helen said. “And this, down here by the ocean – “

“The ehhif call that ‘Santa Monica’,” Hwaith said. “Lots of houses, some of the big ffihlm studios have lots near there…”

“Any quakes there?” Urruah said.

“Not recently,” said Hwaith. “But some months back we had one.”

Helen nodded.“And then there’s this.” She reached out to point at another spot, more westerly and closer to the hills. “Those two six-point intersections are kind of hard to miss. Sunset Boulevard, where Beverly and Crescent cross each other?”

“That’s right,” Hwaith said, peering more closely at the map.

“That’s the Beverly Hills Hotel in your time?”

“Oh yes,” Hwaith said, “but it doesn’t look like the hotel’s the marked spot, does it – “ He put one of his own paws on the map: the streetscape enlarged, but the light stayed the same size, relocating itself as the map changed. “No, it’s one of those little streets behind it. Rochdale, I think. Now why under the Eye would the gate be wanting to put a root down there?”

Or why would it be told to? Rhiow thought.“But it doesn’t matter,” Hwaith said. “I know a Person very close to there who knows everything that goes on inside that place.”

“Perhaps you might introduce us,” Rhiow said.

“As soon as we’re done here, I’ll take you right down,” Hwaith said. “The time of day’s no issue: there are People in and out of her place by light or night. And whoever else is interested should come too…though I assume we’re going to be splitting up to check out the root locationsseparately.”

“It makes most sense, I’d guess,” Urruah said. He glanced up at Helen. “Maybe you want to choose the one where an ehhif wizard could come by the most information,” he said.

Helen looked at the map.“Hard to say where that might be,” she said. But as Rhiow watched her, Helen slipped a hand inside her shirtfront and touched something hidden there that hung from her throat. For a second she held very still.

Though no words of the Speech were spoken aloud, to Rhiow there was no mistaking the slight scent of some kind of ehhif wizardry on the air. Faintly Rhiow thought she heard something odd in the middle distance, like sticks cracking or snapping. No, she thought then, as she smelled smoke, and glanced around her quickly. Like fire in brush. But there wasn’t any fire —

Then Rhiow was jolted out of her analysis by the raucous noise of some kind of bird braying at them all from up in a nearby pine tree. It was an extraordinary noise, suggesting something mechanical rather than biological, and something that needed a session in the shop and a lube job, at that.

Hwaith laughed under his breath, a little audible trill.“Dawn’s coming,” he said. “The jays always know.”

“That was a bluejay?” Arhu said, looking up into the tree, and licking his chops.

“Not one of your little eastern ones,” Hwaith said. “This one’s a crow relative.”

“The melodious voice,” Rhiow said, “is a giveaway.” She sighed. “Well, we should get moving. Aufwi, Hwaith, is this gate likely to move if we leave it here?”

They both waved their tails“no”. “It seems like all its intent’s to stay right where it is,” Aufwi said. “For the moment, that seems just as well. Of course we’ll have to put up some kind of bounding spell to keep it hidden, and keep ehhif and everything else away from it.”

“We’ll take care of that,” Arhu said, as Siff’hah collapsed her map spell.

“Stay clear of its control structures when you ward it,” Urruah said. “You don’t want to jostle it into doing something while you’re setting up the spell.”

“Which brings us to the next question,” Rhiow said. “The roots… Can you keep it from putting any more down? We’ve got enough problems as it is.”

“I should be able to prevent it,” Aufwi said. “I’ll shout if there seem to be any problems.”

Rhiow was somehow sure that there would be. And one more thing to check yet, she thought. But a moment for that. She glanced up at Helen.“Well,” she said, “what did your ikheya say?”

Helen grinned at her.“Caught that, did you,” she said. “He says, Since you People have an ehhif with you, she might as well see what kind of news other ehhif can give her while you folks are discovering what you can from other People. I’ll take myself downhill to the Library and have a look at the papers…see what news the world throws in my way.”

“But not like that – !” Hwaith said, sounding rather distressed all of a sudden. “Queen-ehhif don’t dress that way these days – “

“Oh, no, not like that at all,” Helen said. “I thought I’d wear something like this – “

The change was so abrupt it made Rhiow blink. One moment Helen was standing there in her police clothes, and the next she was wearing a long, tan, belted coat with a patterned dress underneath it, and (what most surprised Rhiow) a hat that actually had a veil attached. Rhiow was no expert in the ins and outs of ehhif fashion, but she recognized the clothing as well out of date for her own time, if only because Helen was so much more covered than most of the ehhif she saw in New York.

Hwaith looked most surprised.“Nice illusion!” he said. “I can’t even see through it – “

Helen took off the hat, wiped a little sweat off her brow, and replaced the hat again.“Not an illusion,” she said. “It’s a full transform. It costs, yes, but sometimes it’s useful to be able to do one in a hurry.”

“I bet you have to do that a lot back up at our end of things,” Arhu said. “Human wizards have to hide what they’re doing all the time…”

“Most of them do,” Helen said, looking down at herself and brushing at the skirt. “But for me it’s not as much of a problem as it is for most. I keep what I’m doing out of view, sure. But if I need some time off to do an intervention, I just tell my colleagues I’m going off to do some wizardry.” Then she laughed at Rhiow’s expression, and Arhu’s. “No, seriously! They know I’m Native American, and a shaman for my band. So anybody I mention it to thinks I’m just going off to do some New Age thing, with drumming or something.”

Rhiow waved her tail, impressed.“I bet a lot of your fellow ehhif wizards wish they had such a good excuse…”

“I’d take that bet,” Helen said, and grinned. “As for the clothes, though – they’re just me being lazy. I got into the habit when I was working Vice a few years ago. Couldn’t be bothered changing them again and again – especially with the clothes they were giving me: who knew where they’d been? — Anyway, Hwaith, will I fit in? How’s the style look?”

“Good,” Hwaith said. “Very modern.”

“That’s fine: I was shooting for just postwar,” Helen said. “So, as I said, I’ll go have some breakfast, wait for the library to open…see what I can pick up. If we’re going to split up, where should we meet up again afterwards?”

“Back up here, I’d say,” Rhiow said. “Aufwi, if anything gets out of hand up here, call and we’ll come running.”

She turned again to look at the gate, hanging there shimmering innocently in the predawn twilight, for all the world as if there had been nothing wrong with it at all. Yet… “I was told to root here,” Rhiow said under her breath, “’and here I will stay.’”

“Yes,” Hwaith said. He had come up beside her and was looking at the gate with an annoyed expression. “I heard something like that too.”

Which reminds me that there was one more thing I wanted to check.“Cousin,” Rhiow said then, “walk with me a little way?” And she headed uphill, under the shadow of more of the evergreen oaks, toward a lesser crest of the hill they stood on.

Hwaith looked at her oddly for a moment, then followed. Rhiow paused under the last of the trees before the upper hillcrest, and as Hwaith caught up with her, she said, Please, Hwaith, forgive me the familiarity–

It’s not a problem, he said silently. You have to ask: how are my relations with my gate?

She put her whiskers forward. You really do have the Ear, she said. And yes, I do have to ask. For gate management was not just a matter of mechanics, of knowing which string to pull, and when, and how hard. Gates were tremendously complex constructions incorporating the hyperstrings that were the Universe’s building-blocks with hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of words in the Speech which had made the Universe out of those building-blocks. Where such complexities had been sustained for prolonged periods, there was always a question of whether or not the construction incorporating them hadacquired some level of sentience…and many gates acted as if they had. Where there was sentience, or the appearance of it, there was relationship: and sometimes relationships went bad.

Rhiow, I’ve been working with this gate for nearly seventy moons, Hwaith said. It’s never given me more than a moment’s trouble, from the first weeks I spent with it until a few weeks ago when it began to misbehave. And there was no sudden withdrawal of cooperation, no falling-out. He sat down, looked eastward: out there, slowly making itself apparent through the haze over the furthest line of hills, was the Great Tom’s Eye, what ehhif called the Moon, rising now, and half-closed. Just, at the end of the last moon, as the Eye started to go dark, a feeling that the gate’s attention was turning elsewhere. Or being turned. As if it was being increasingly distracted by something besides me and this world…something just out of the field of vision, the thing you feel with your whiskers and can’t see…

She looked at Hwaith, troubled by the trouble in those bronzy eyes. He glanced back, and lashed his tail once or twice, a frustrated gesture. Maybe if I’d called for help sooner, he said, none of this would be happening. Or it would have happened, and have been fixed by now. Have I been acting too much like a tom…?

The question caught Rhiow completely off guard…especially as it was one she couldn’t recall ever having been asked by a tom before: they didn’t tend toward self-analysis nearly as much as queens did. I don’t think so, she said at last. Which leaves us looking at the same problem, I suppose. ‘I was told to stay here.’ Told by whom?

“It’s the question I don’t seem to be able to find an answer to,” Hwaith said, aloud now. “And as you’ve heard, the Whisperer didn’t have one either. I suspect that’s what we’ve got to find out.”

She flicked one ear in unnerved agreement.“It’s when we most want concrete answers from Them that we don’t get any,” Rhiow said. “Annoying. But it’s the world we’ve got, until we fix it…so let’s get busy.”

She got up and shook herself, and saw Urruah coming up the hillside toward them.“’Ruah,” Rhiow said, “let’s take one last – “ Then she stopped: for Urruah had stopped too, and was staring at her. “What?” Rhiow said.

He started cursing under his breath, though in a good-natured way.“I can’t believe I’ve been here for an hour without seeing that!” Urruah said.

She waved her tail, confused.“Seeing what?”

“Look up there!”

Rhiow looked over her shoulder, confused. Dimly to be seen above and beyond her and Hwaith, silhouetted against the slow-growing twilight, a great flat pale oblong shape reared up and caught a very little of the cityglow from beneath them. Urruah seemed quite taken with it, though, and Rhiow had to stare at it for a moment before she recognized it as a squared-off version of the ehhif-English letter“D”. It looked to be in bad shape: the wood of which the letter had been built was streaked with bird droppings and pocked here and there with what looked like bullet holes; its white paint was peeling, and the whole letter leaned backwards against its supporting struts as if considering the virtues of falling down. There were light bulbs all round the letter, outlining it, but most of them were broken, and in any case the power to them seemed to have been switched off.

Rhiow craned her neck a bit to catch a glimpse of more letters like this one, reaching eastward along the ridge of the hill from where they all stood. L A N D, said the ones she could see.“Some kind of advertisement?” she said after a moment. If there was one thing she’d learned about ehhif over time, it was that they would put up an ad anywhere that gravity would allow.

Hwaith made a little trilling noise down in his throat, a feline chuckle.“That’s right. Some ehhif started building a housing development up here a couple of decades ago, and they put these letters up here to show where the houses would go.” He glanced up at the D, waved his tail in amusement. “They were supposed to take it down quite some while back, but they’ve seemed to become too fond of it to get rid of it…or too lazy to bother. I take it they still haven’t done anything about it, uptime?”

Urruah chuckled too.“Oh, they’ve done something,” he said, “but not in terms of getting rid of it.”

Rhiow quirked her tail at him to forestall the inevitable explanation.“’Ruah,” she said, “later for this. Are the others ready to go?”

“Just about.”

“All right,” Rhiow said. “Come on…”

With the two toms following after, Rhiow walked back down to where the gate hovered, now inside the nearly-unseen spherical shell of a boundary wizardry that Aufwi had erected around it. Arhu and Siff’hah and Helen had just finished checking it over with him. “If any ehhif come up here,” Aufwi said to Rhiow as she came up, “they won’t even get close enough to the boundary to bump into it: they’ll just get an urge to steer away.”

“That’s fine,” Rhiow said. “So let’s all get out there and see what we can discover. Take a close look at the other ends of the gate’s roots, see what they’re sunk into, and try to get a sense of why they chose that particular spot. The answer may not be obvious: it might be some transitory phenomenon, or some person or being that’s been in that spot, rather than something inherent in the spot itself. Once you think you’ve worked it out, don’t do anything about the root: we’re all going to have to act together in that regard. But take the time to check the surrounding area carefully. Time’s the issue here, after all. We can’t stay backtime all that long on any one trip: besides the danger of producing nested time paradoxes, it’s just plain bad for the soul, and none of us needs to add temporal wasting to the problems we’ve got already. So make your observations count, and don’t be afraid to bring a little more data back than you strictly think you need.”

Everyone swung their tails or nodded that they understood.“Let’s go, then,” Rhiow said. “Hwaith, is our own goal close enough to walk to?”

“It’s a long walk,” he said, “unless you’re used to that kind of thing.”

She flirted her tail as they all started downhill, making for a path that could be seen down below, among the trees.“I’m a New Yorker,” she said. “I do my forty blocks a day…it shouldn’t be a problem.” As Arhu galloped past her down the hill, she reached out a claw and just managed to snag his tail.

He skidded to a halt before the claw had time to dig in.“You be careful!” Rhiow said.

“Oh, come on, Rhi! We’ve been backtime before!”

“Not this close to our hometime,” Rhiow said. “Little distances between times are more dangerous than big ones. A mistake made way back leaves you lots of successor instants to correct it, and the piled-up error is big and easy to patch. Close in, the effects are a lot more subtle, and fixingthem is sa’Rraah’s own business. So watch what you do – “

“Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on her! Don’t get your tail in a kink!” Arhu said, and galloped on down toward the path.

In his wake came Siff’hah, who threw Rhiow a look of profound annoyance. “And watch your manners when you meet People here,” Rhiow said, though. “None of the edgy stuff like a few minutes ago.” She put her whiskers forward, for it had still been funny. “So disrespectful to a more senior wizard! Jath would be shocked.”

“Please,” Siff’hah said, and laid her whiskers back. “Don’t ‘Jath’ me! Yet another tom. Has it occurred to you how many of them seem to be around at the moment?”

Hwaith glanced around him as if this news came as a surprise, and Rhiow’s whiskers went even further forward. “Oh, you’re okay, Hwaith. But Rhi, did you hear him? ‘I’ll keep an eye on her?’” Siff’hah snorted. “No doubt using the one brain cell he keeps tucked away up his thath and only sticks in his head occasionally for fear he’ll wear it out. Andas for Urruah – “

“Now now,” Rhiow said.

“Oh, he’s all right,” Siff’hah said. “But he’s such a – he’s such a boy!”

“Boys have their uses,” Rhiow said, with a humorous glance at Hwaith. “As we will doubtless hear you saying over and over to anyone who’ll bother listening when you’re next in heat. Meanwhile, the single-brain-celled one is getting ahead of you.” She peered past Siff’hah. “Probably going to fall down that next ravine if someone doesn’t hurry up and keep him out of trouble…”

Siff’hah plunged downhill after her brother. “They’re good kits,” Rhiow said when Siff’hah was safely out of earshot, to judge by the sudden sounds of crunching and thrashing in the toyon and manzanita brush at the bottom of the hill. “A little rambunctious.”

“But extremely powerful,” Hwaith said. “The Whisperer told me their power ratings. You’ve got your hands full.”

Rhiow laughed under her breath.“It’s not just a question of power,” she said. “You should have seen Arhu when he first arrived: all claws and ego – he’d have shredded sa’Rraah’s own ears if he thought she was looking at him the wrong way. And Sif was apparently much the same. They’ve both had a busy time of it,this life: and a hard one. But they’re settling in.”

“It must be interesting working with a team,” Hwaith said, looking over his shoulder to where Urruah and Helen were walking together and chatting.

“It must be interesting working unaffiliated,” Rhiow said. “Aufwi’s been doing it for a long time. And – seventy moons, you said? That’s a good while. But this isn’t a busy gate.”

“No,” Hwaith said. “Historically, San Francisco’s always taken most of the strain – especially bearing in mind the willful way this gate’s always behaved. No one’s relied on it for much.” He glanced back upslope to where Aufwi was minding it. “To tell you the truth, I’d hoped, when I timeslid ahead, that I’d find it’d finally been clouted into some kind of stability.” The look he gave Rhiow as they came down onto the path was rueful. “And that you folks’d be able to tell me how to come back and straighten things out.”

“More likely,” Rhiow said, “what we do back here will enable us to go back ahead and get it straightened out. It’s we who’ll be thanking you.” She peered over the edge of the ground past the path, where the crashing noises of the twins heading downhill were continuing. “Looks like they’re taking a short cut,” Rhiow said, and glanced over her shoulder at Helen, who with Urruah had just come down onto the path behind them

Helen, too, was looking down that way with amusement.“It’s a good thing we weren’t trying to be sneaky or anything,” she said.

Rhiow laughed.“They’ve got the sense to sidle,” she said. “So should we, I suppose: no point in confusing any ehhif we might meet out early walking their dogs.”

“You won’t see much of that up here,” Hwaith said, as they both paused to go invisible, and Urruah came up with them. “Up here in the canyons, most of the dogs are kept in the ehhifs’ houses, or in their yards: they’d be nervous about taking them out, for fear of running into coyotes.”

Urruah chuckled, sidling himself.“Well, neither dogs or coyotes are likely to be a problem for us,” he said, pausing for just a moment to sidle. “But it’s as well to preserve a low profile. What can’t see you, can’t have its eyes looked through by…other interested parties.” He sounded a little disturbed as they made their way along down the path, which began to curve as the hillside did, under the outreaching branches of the gray ghost pines.

“You caught that scent too,” Hwaith said, “did you?”

Urruah’s nose wrinkled. “Something rank,” he said. “Yes. Never got that from a gate before, no matter how badly it was malfunctioning. You notice it, Rhi?”

“I did,” she said. “And it seems to me that it had something to do with what I felt while we were in transit, in the timeslide. That cold feeling…”

“And different from the Lone Power,” Hwaith said, sounding almost upset by this. “You know how it is – how you can almost always hear her laughing, that angry, nasty edge – “

Rhiow had to agree with him. She’d sensed that before, too, and it had been completely missing in whatever had been lurking just beyond the walls of the timespace corridor through which they’d been traveling. As they came to a spot further down the hill where their path met a broader one, graveled, and coming from the right, Rhiow looked over her shoulder and said, “Helen, did you – “

Then her eyes went wide. Helen was not there.

Urruah and Hwaith looked behind them, too, and were surprised.“Where’d she go?” Urruah said. “Did she sidle?”

“We’d have felt it,” Hwaith said. He was right: you usually could feel someone else sidling in the immediate vicinity. But none of them had felt anything – nor, as they looked around, did it seem that she’d used any of the other methods for invisibility available to wizards.

“Boy,” Urruah said, “she really does walk softly. One of those tribal talents, I guess.”

“Well, she knows where to meet us,” Rhiow said. “Come on, let’s get where we’re going…”

The track below them abruptly ceased to be gravel and pine needles and bark chippings, and turned into the place where, on both sides of the sudden, capped-off road, the sidewalk began. To a city Person, this was a strange contrast, eloquent of the difference between city and country. But overhead the live oaks and the peppertrees leaned in over the path, along with the occasional ragged escapee palm up the hillside; and from their quiet predawn murmurings, Rhiow could tell that the road that started where the sidewalk did meant nothing in particular to them. As far as the trees were concerned, these were the hills eternal, as they had been since the Ice retreated, and a little concrete more or less on the ground hardly mattered at all. The Ice had broken it before, and would again: and afterwards, in the fullness of time, the Trees would still be there.

Once the road began, no wider than a Manhattan side street, the houses started too. They were relatively small at first, widely separated bungalows and two-storey houses mostly done in white stucco and tiled roofs. Some of their gardens looked a little ragged, overgrown with wiry-looking ground cover, pachysandra and pinched-looking ice plant. Here and there the ground under the hundred-foot royal palms was untidy with spiky, frayed heaps of their long shed olive-green frond; and scattered palm-fruits, like fat fluorescent-orange marbles, lay squashed on the sidewalks and in the road. Rhiow paused by one palm tree, sniffing.“Rats?” she said. “Up in the trees?”

“Palm rats.” Hwaith cocked an eye up toward the crown of one of the king palms. From up there Rhiow could hear a strange scratchy noise, like her ehhif’s old mechanical alarm clock trying to ring when it wasn’t properly wound up.

“Any sport in those?” Urruah said.

“When they come down, sure,” Hwaith said. “Unless you feel like going up after them. They have a little bit of an advantage up there…”

“But if you skywalked…”

“Yeah, but is that sport?”

Rhiow smiled to herself as they headed further down the canyon, and the sidewalk became wider and cleaner, and the houses bigger, and the driveways broader. It was as if the further down you got from the clear air and the hills’ height, the more important it became to let other ehhif know how important you were – mostly by the size of what you “owned”. This was a behavior Rhiow knew all too well from Manhattan – knowing also how the Earth itself laughed at the concept of ownership, as hilarious to the semi-sentience indwelling in the ancient bedrock as the idea of ehhif selling each other virtual artifacts and “unreal estate” in computer games. In New York, anyway, the Earth had not for many centuries done what it might so easily do – just shrug, and then bear the brief glass-splinter itch as thingsfell down and smashed. Here, though, that’s just what it’s been doing. And indeed she could see, as they walked downhill through wisps of morning mist, the occasional upthrust slabs in the sidewalk and cracks in the stucco and plaster of the houses they passed: the shed tiles that no one had noticed or picked up, the slow rilling trickle from someone’s ultramodern lawn-watering system where a pipe had cracked, and the trickling leak was spinning palm pollen and pine needles down into the gutter. Worse could happen. Worse will happen. Iau, Whisperer, be with us, let us know what we need to know to keep it from happening: in the here and now, and our now and then…

They turned a switchback curve in the road.“What in the Tom’s Name,” Urruah shouted as they came around and saw a huge mist-glamoured vehicle crouching by the curb outside one oversized bungalow, “is that what I think it is? It’s a Hhhu’ssenherh!”

He ran off across the street toward one of the big heavy vehicles, walking around it and staring up at it in a good imitation of awe.“Is this one of your passions too?” Rhiow said to Hwaith.

They both stopped dead as Arhu galloped unheeding past them down the middle of the road at top speed, shortly followed by Siff’hah, who was fluffed up from nose to tail and cursing her brother loudly. “Uh, not particularly,” Hwaith said, after the ruckus had gone by and vanished around the downhill curve. “I guess it’s one of those situations where you don’t really notice something until the tourists come through.” He put his whiskers forward.

“I’ve only seen these in ffhilms,” Urruah said, turning around to spray one of the vehicle’s snow-white tires with great care. “Isn’t it fabulous?”

Rhiow flirted her tail.“If you say so. ‘Ruah, you’re not by any chance doing something that would annoy the ehhif who owns it, are you?”

“Oh, not so anyone would care…” He waltzed back over to Rhiow and Hwaith. “It’ll wash off in the next rain…”

“Hah,” Hwaith said, amused, as he led them on down the hill. “You really are a New Yorker. ‘The next rain’ won’t be until October.”

They ambled further on down the road, and Rhiow noted as they went that the houses seemed to be getting much bigger, the front yards most seriously wider and deeper and more manicured, if occasionally a bit brown; and some of the houses even had two of the big autos in front of them.“You must have good police here,” Rhiow said, glancing into one driveway at the two massive cars there. “You’d think just anybody could steal them, or key them, out here…”

“Steal them?” Hwaith said, sounding shocked. “They wouldn’t get far. The police here are pretty good, for ehhif. And I don’t think there are as many cars now as you folks have uptime…”

Rhiow cocked an ear: the Whisperer slipped a number into it. She blinked.“Three million?” she said. “In the whole state?”

“You’ll believe they’re all right here in the Basin, under your nose,” Hwaith said, sounding rueful, “the first time the inversion layer gets bad.”

“Leaded gas…” Urruah said, waving his tail, looking back at the big cars as they headed on downhill.

Hwaith looked at him with big bronzy eyes, their polite expression nonetheless managing to suggest that Urruah was one whisker short of a full set.“What else would there be?”

“Wait a while,” Urruah said. “Believe me, it gets better. And you just wait till the sushi bars open.”

“What’s sushi?”

Urruah took a deep breath, then let it go as they all paused in the middle of the street where it was crossed by another. The four-way STOP sign might as well have been in the middle of the Mojave for all the traffic there was at this hour of the morning.“Let it be,” Rhiow said. “Hwaith, Herself is very quiet. Have you noticed that?”

“Unusually so,” Hwaith said. “I hate it when She waits for us to tell Her what to do.”

“You and me both, littermate,” Rhiow said.

They wandered across the intersection, and Rhiow caught a sidewise glance from Urruah as he headed across the road to sniff at the base of a peppertree.‘Littermate?’

She gave Urruah his look back with a dead rat on top. Goodness me,‘Ruah, do I detect a note of jealousy?

Of what? Of him? Urruah busied himself spraying the bottom of the royal palm at the corner with an expression of utter abstraction. He’s too skinny for you, Rhi. Plus, you met him, what? Two hours ago?

Fifty years ago, some ways, Rhiow said, angling gently rightward: away down the road, she could see another of those huge blunt round cars coming up the road. He’s a nice young wizard who can use some emotional support, the way things are going around here. Got a problem with that, Dumpster boy? Go pee on another tree.

Urruah gave her an amused look as she and Hwaith stepped up onto the curb. He trotted away from them, across yet another perfectly coiffed emerald-and-jade-striped lawn, to examine a big scraggly bush with bright red flowers that looked like bottlebrushes. Urruah stared up into the tree as they walked past the large pink-stuccoed house it leaned on.“You People have really large bees here!” he said.

“Uh…it’s a hummingbird,” Hwaith said softly, but not in time for Urruah to get out of the way of the furious little bundle of scarlet feathers that came diving at him from higher up in the bottlebrush tree, making a sound like an infuriated cellphone stuck in texting mode.

Urruah went galloping off in a gray-tabby streak into the next yard downhill: the hummingbird, a subdued blood-ruby glint in the early light, went after him at humm factor five, closing fast. Urruah dove head-first into a bed of ivy and vanished.

Rhiow had to stand still for a moment: it was bad for a team leader to be visibly incapacitated by laughter, at least for longer than a breath or three.“City guy,” Hwaith said under his breath. “We get them here. But there are cities, and there are cities.”

“I begin to get that sense,” Rhiow said. They walked another block or so downhill, the equivalent of a Manhattan long block – if the road wound rather more while it made its way down the hillside — while Urruah lost his pursuer, or talked it out of the pursuit, and emerged from a low flat bank of ornamental yew, looking ruffled but (to do him credit) amused.

“Didn’t look like it was much interested in the Formic Word,” Rhiow said, as Urruah joined them in sauntering down the middle of the street again. From behind them and off to the left, where there was more high ground, mist had begun rolling gently down the hillside. It started to slip acrossthe road as they walked, so that shortly they and the big ehhif vehicles by the curbs were hock-or half-wheel-deep in it.

“No,” Urruah said. “My mistake. Can we bring about five million of those things home with us? Think what they’d do to the pigeons!”

Hwaith chuckled.“I wish,” he said. “Our pigeons don’t seem all that impressed. But if you think it’d make a difference…”

They headed downhill, and the yards around the increasingly magnificent houses started to resemble significant portions of Central Park.“It’s not like they use any of this space…” Urruah said.

“But they could.” Hwaith said. “I think that’s the message.”

“Typical ehhif,” Rhiow said. “Prove how important you are by having lots of ground and keeping other ehhif from having it.”

“It’s true,” Hwaith said. He sounded regretful, as they stopped at another intersection. The country around them had flattened out now; above their heads, looking southward, a little spiky-headed forest of palms reared itself against a sky slowly growing violet-blue with the light of the dawnat its back and the reflected light from the unseen sea beneath it. “At least some of them are that way. Not all. The one whose house we’re going to: he’s one of the ones who don’t seem to care. He’s all about ehhif, and not about where they are, if I understand it. And his house is friendly to People.” Hwaith looked up the cross street and down it, like any New Yorker, but with (from Rhiow’s point of view) far less need, for there still wasn’t a car in sight.

“Does one of our People live with him?” Rhiow said as they crossed the wide street.

“Absolutely. She’s such a gossipmonger: there’s nothing happening in these hills, and the businesses around them, that Ssh’iivha doesn’t know. That’s why she’s our first stop.” He paused once more, glancing around him. “Come on; we’ll go in the back way.”

He headed off to the right. As they went, Rhiow saw that each block of the broad clean street had a kind of shadow block behind it; a little blank bare alley with a gutter down the middle of it, to carry runoff water when it rained, and– behind each house – a gate behind which the ribbed metal bins where ehhif put their castoff stuff stood ranked. Here and there such bins stood with their lids askew, but (rather to Rhiow’s surprise) no People were patronizing them. As they walked by the first few gates and bins, Urruah sniffed appreciatively. “High-end stuff in there,” he said. “Smells like Zabar’s.”

You would know better than I would, Rhiow thought, but didn’t say. Hwaith led them past one pair of garbage cans to one high gate in a property’s back wall. It had a hinged People-door cut into it. “Right through here,” Hwaith said, and led the way through.

Rhiow slipped through behind him, followed a second later by Urriah. They found themselves standing at the rear of a back yard as beautifully groomed as the front yards they’d been seeing, but much smaller. Here and there a few lawn chairs stood around on the grass, and a round table with an umbrella and a couple of seats set beside it. Past them was a patio area with potted palms set out at its ends, and on the far side of the patio, a large pink-stuccoed bungalow with high glass doors looking out on the back yard. Between those doors and the smaller back door, under the windows, a row of bowls was set out – about twelve of them, it seemed.

Hwaith led them up to the house.“If it’s been a while since you’ve had a snack,” Hwaith said, “feel free to tuck in. That’s what they’re out here for.”

Urruah walked among them, inhaling appreciatively.“Can you smell this stuff?” he said under his breath. “No coloring agents! No preservatives! No weird chemical agents with numbers instead of names! No vegetable additives snuck in by confused animal activists! No vhai’d rice or ‘roughage’ — nothing but meat! All kinds of meat!” He looked briefly confused. “And now that I think of it…what kind of meat is that I’m smelling in this stuff?”

“Probably mink,” said an amused voice from off to one side. “After they make coats out of them, what’s left over winds up in the canned People-food….”

From around the corner of the house, along a walkway that probably ran to the front yard, came a Person. She was, as People reckoned such things, extremely beautiful in an exotic way: white-furred, fluffy, and a bit plump, with small, well-set ears and vividly green eyes. Nor was she one of those flat-faced, inbred People whom ehhif have inflicted on the worlds over time, but a long-nosed, gracious-looking Person, with a look of courtesy and intelligence about her to go with the beauty. Rhiow didn’t bother glancing back at Urruah to see his reaction: she could already hear him doting on this pretty new apparition.

“Hunt’s luck, Hwaith,” the newcomer said. “Long time no smell!” They breathed breaths briefly.

“Got some visitors in, Ssh’iivha,” Hwaith said. “They’re hunting news, and I knew just where to bring them.”

“News we’ve got,” Ssh’iivha said. “More of it than I know what to do with. Hunters, you’re welcome! Luck to you all. Come on in, get comfortable. Names or not as you like…”

“Names, of course,” Rhiow said, coming forward to breathe breaths with their hostess. “I’m Rhiow. And thanks for your welcome! We’ve come a long way on our business: we’re on errantry, and we greet you – “

“Oh, I knew that,” Ssh’iivha said; “anyone could see you’re wizards, just by looking at you. You’ve got Hwaith’s look.” Behind her, Rhiow could just hear Urruah’s comment on that: fortunately it was well submerged in the levels of private thoughtspeech to which another nonwizardlyPerson would not be privy. “Whatever brings you here, you’re welcome.”

“Is it all right for us to be here?” Rhiow said as Urruah went to greet Ssh’iivha. “It won’t make trouble for you with your ehhif?”

“Oh no!” Ssh’iivha said, and laughed. “He likes People: that’s why he’s left all this food around. Everyone comes here to visit the Buffet, and swap news. This is a regular clearing house for Our Kind’s gossip, all up and down these hills. Which is doubtless why you’re here.” She gave Hwaith an affectionate look, and at the sight of it Rhiow felt a strange pang she didn’t know how to classify. But then how many nonwizardly People am I close to at home? she thought. Just Yafv, really. And just to say hello to in the mornings, when I pass him on his stoop, fresh from his latest rat. It must be nice to be part of a mixed community…

“It’s an unusual ehhif you’ve got,” Rhiow said, “who’s willing to make so many of us welcome when they don’t actually live with him.”

“That’s true enough,” Ssh’iivha said. “But he’s something of a loner, and I think we’re company for him without needing to get into emotional involvement. You know how some ehhif are…afraid to get too close. Anyway, if you’re sure you’re not hungry, come on in…”

Ssh’iivha led them in through another People-door, this one built into the normal ehhif back door. “If I may ask,” Urruah said, glancing around him as they came through the big white-tiled kitchen full of huge, stocky, retro-looking appliances, “is ‘Ssh’iivha’ a real name or a nickname?”

Rhiow’s whiskers went forward a little: it was the kind of question a tom might ask of a queen he was getting interested in. “Well, actually it’s both,” Ssh’iivha said. “My ehhif uses it too, or a word that sounds a lot like it. Used it, I should say.”

They came out into the living room. It was handsome, airy, but spare. It was high-ceilinged, wooden-floored, white-walled, and sparse of furniture– suggesting that the ehhif who lived there was either in transit, didn’t consider furniture all that important, or took pleasure in taunting the ehhif around him with his own opinion that their surroundings were too cluttered. Here and there, on one or another of the low white sofas, some Person slept: here a brown tabby, there a white shorthair with his feet in the air. “If you want to take a while to relax,” Ssh’iivha said, “this is the place for you. The neighbors make no trouble: my ehhif makes everything right with them. So we try to keep things right with him. No mating in the back yard, no yelling, no fighting with the neighbors’ People; this is a no-heuwwaff zone.”

“Oh,” Urruah said, sounding slightly disappointed. Rhiow had to fight to keep her whiskers from going too far forward, as mating, yelling and fighting with other toms were probably Urruah’s three favorite things besides wizardry.

Ssh’iivha jumped up on a spare couch and stretched out: Hwaith went up after her, and Rhiow followed, while Urruah stalked around a little examining more of the room, particularly a massive desk over by one of the windows that looked out into the back yard, flanked on both sides with full bookshelves and a couple of occasional tables piled with more books. “You say,” Rhiow said, “that your ehhif ‘used’ your name. But he doesn’t use it now?”

“Oh, yes,” Ssh’iivha said, “just not out loud, these days. It seems silly to think it’s a coincidence: I suspect he can hear us a little, though he probably doesn’t think of it that way. And he talks to us as if he thinks we can hear, which is considerate for an ehhif.”

“But he doesn’t speak out loud….” Urruah said. He was up on the desk now, peering at the complex-looking black-and-gold machine on the top of it.

“No,” Ssh’iivha said. “There’s something the matter with his throat. If he has something to say to other ehhif, he has to write it down on a piece of paper and give it to them. We can just barely hear him whisper, but other ehhif can’t hear him at all.” Ssh’iivha waved her tail, sadly, slowly. “He wasn’t always like this. A while after I came to live with him, his voice started to get hoarse. Finally he went off where ehhif go to be healed, the hhohs’hihal: and he came home seeming well enough, but without his voice. So now all our People call him Eth’ehhif, the SilentMan, when they visit.”

“I tried to have a look at him to see what was going on with his throat,” Hwaith said, sounding a little embarrassed, “but I couldn’t get far. I’m not really much good at healing: I specialize in spatial constructs, mostly. And he’s spiky, Rhiow: a real tom. You try to get friendly withhim, and if he didn’t start the process himself, he wonders what you’re up to, he holds you away….”

Rhiow waved her own tail, trying to maintain her composure. The words“the hhohs’hihal” had brought the fur up on her against her will. She could still see her poor Hhu’ha’s discarded body lying there on a steel slab, not inconsiderately treated, but nonetheless terribly empty of the soul that had so often used that flesh to pick her up and cuddle her and make rude-for-ehhif noises against her belly — an entirely undignified process for a Person, and one without which the world was now all too dry and empty a place. “We’ll look into it while we’re here, if you like,” Rhiow said, commanding herself to some kind of calm. “We’ve got some other things to look into as well, but if we cross his path we’ll certainly try to see if he needs some kind of assistance that we can offer him. Are you expecting him soon?”

“It’s hard to say,” Ssh’iivha said. “He works our hours, truly: he’s almost more one of us than one of them. Out from sunset to a bit past dawn, usually: then he comes home, makes notes of what he’s seen and where he’s been, and after a drink of something, falls over. He’s in the Business, you see. He sleeps the day away…then, a while before sunset, he gets up and dresses himself and goes out again.”

“’The Business?’” Rhiow said. “Which one?”

“He makes dreams,” Ssh’iivha said. Hheivvhwei was the Ailurin word she used, a common one for fiction, as opposed to fwaiwei, “news”, a story that was known or supposed to have really happened.

Urruah jumped down from the desk and wandered back over to them.“He’s working with one of the ss’huhios?” he said.

“That’s right,” Ssh’iivha said. She looked over at Hwaith. “It’s the place that has the lion as its symbol: don’t ask me the name of it – they’ve changed that about three times in the last few years. He’s just finished work on a ffhilm for them. It’s based on one of the stories he told for one of the hviih-sh’ethh, the papers-that-speak-silently.”

“A magazine,” Urruah said. “Interesting.”

“But I heard from one of the other People who come through here, Hhaiivuh his name is, he’s a mouser at one of the other ss’huhios, that the eth’Ehhif was lucky to finish work on that ffhilm when he did.” Ssh’iivha’s eyes went wide with the expression of a Person plunging happily intothe latest gossip. “Apparently that big earthquake the other day did a lot of damage at the ss’huhio: some gas connection or something went wrong in the fake-street where they’d been making the ffhilm, and half the backlot burned down. There were even a couple of ehhif killed. The police and the ehhif who put out fires were all over the place for days. And even now that they’ve gone, everyone’s schedules over there are in shreds, it seems…”

“The earthquakes,” Hwaith said, “they’re part of what’s brought us here. But I hadn’t heard that anyone had been killed!”

“Oh yes,” said Ssh’iivha. “And here’s a curiosity for you! The ehhif who died in the fire weren’t even ss’huhio people, Hhaiivuh said. They were [insert Ailurin term here] ehhif – “ she used the word for “stray” that many People used to express the human-English term “homeless” – “and no one’s sure how they got into the backlot, or why they didn’t get out when the fire started. Because it didn’t start suddenly: it took a long time to get going, Hhaiivuh said. Maybe too long.” Ssh’iivha flicked on ear back in a bemused gesture. “Hhaiivuh told me that there’s a rumor going around that the fire wasn’t really caused by the earthquake at all, but started on purpose – “

From out at the front of the house came a sudden noise: a car door slamming.“Oh,” Ssh’iivha said, “he’s home early today. Anyway, Hhaiivuh told me that another of the hunters over there, Fehwau, said he’d been over in that part of the backlot earlier in the day and hadn’t smelled anybody who shouldn’t have been there. He said, Why would homeless ehhif have been there except to sleep? It didn’t make sense that they would have been there so late in the day, because the fire started at about noon, right when that earthquake happened – “

A key turned in the front door, and it opened. The ehhif who came in was extremely well-dressed: three-piece suit in dove grey, expensive-looking silvery silk tie, fedora just a shade of grey darker, shoes to match. He wasn’t a tall man, and was rather pale and slightly built; but to Rhiow’s way of thinking, that wasn’t something you’d notice much once you’d seen his eyes. They were piercing and cool behind the silvery wire-rimmed glasses: the expression could doubtless be rather intimidating, by ehhif standards, depending on what the rest of his face was doing.

He paused there as he shut the door, and glanced around at the various other People lounging about the place, and Ssh’iivha and Urruah and Rhiow and Hwaith. Seeing them all, he nodded, his expression seeming to say that all this was fine with him; and he slipped out of his jacket, draping it carefully over one of the white couches. “Half a moment,” Ssh’iivha said, “the gossip’ll keep,” and she jumped down from the couch to run over to him.

She rubbed against the ehhif’s leg, purring, and he bent down and stroked her, then picked Ssh’iivha up and cuddled her. Awwww, Urruah said silently as she reached a paw up to touch the ehhif’s cheek.

The ehhif’s mouth moved. Hey there, Miss Sheba, he said, and to Rhiow’s astonishment, not a whisper, not a murmur, came out of him as he said it. Had a good night out. Looks like you and your buddies’ve been doing the same.

He put Ssh’iivha down and went to the back door, glancing out at it, apparently to check the state of the food bowls. Then he went to the icebox, got himself a seltzer bottle, spritzed himself a glass full of it, and went over to the typewriter.

The ehhif sat down, reached down into a drawer of the desk, pulled out a sheet of paper, and rolled it into the machine with such speed and ease that it was plain this was something he’d done so many hundreds of thousands of times that he didn’t even need to think about it any more. And then he was typing, fast, with two fingers.

“You see how nice he is,” Ssh’iivha said as she wandered back to the couch and jumped up on it again. “I had no idea that there were ehhif so nice until I came to him.”

“You had another one before?” Rhiow said.

Ssh’iivha scrubbed briefly at one ear, turning it inside out and then rightside in again. “Sa’Rraah sends us these things to test us,” she said. “Oh, Hahr’rena was very beautiful. And very famous, as ehhif judge things: she’s been in a lot of ffhilmss. And she meant well: she was kind enough, when she thought to be. But she’s not very good with People. Sort of an unconscious type, always full of her own dramas and troubles, but never one to depend on for keeping food in the bowl.” Ssh’iivha opened those green eyes wide in a vexed expression. “I can’t tell you how many times I had to walk two blocks from home in BelAir to get a drink out of someone’s fountain or fishpond because she’d forgotten to fill the water dish. I was mortified. All the other ffhilm-ehhifs’ People looking out the window at me as if I was some kind of stray…! Well, finally she met the Silent One here, and ‘gave’ me to him. And was I glad to go!” Ssh’iivha’s tail lashed a little.

Behind them, the typing was going on at full speed: a piece of paper was pulled out of the typewriter, and another one was pulled out of the drawer and inserted and the typing began again, with hardly a second’s break. “He’s a good provider, then,” Rhiow said.

“Absolutely. The house here, the apartment in New York — Oh yes,” Ssh’iivha said, seeing Rhiow’s whiskers go forward, “I thought I heard the accent. Yes, we do well enough. He has a housekeeper who watches this place while we’re not here: the Buffet is on whether we’re here or not. He and I, we go back and forth between the coasts together. Not as often as we used to since before he lost his voice, but…”

Urruah had been watching the rapid-fire typing with increasing curiosity.“Rhi,” he said, “do you need me right now?”

She flicked one ear“no”. Urruah jumped off the couch and padded over to the desk, glancing up at it. “Don’t go in the drawer!” Ssh’iivha said: “he’s fanatical about that. Very organized. And don’t get too close to the left elbow: the speed it moves when he hits the thing that makes the carriage go back over, he’ll knock you halfway into next week, and then spend an hour apologizing.”

Urruah leaped up carefully onto the desk and balanced there on the edge of it, looking at what the ehhif was typing. The ehhif spared him no more than a glance, just enough to make sure that Urruah wasn’t going to disarrange anything or get in the way. You just stay there, fella, he said, and don’t get in the paper drawer – And then he went back to his typing.

“Ssh’iivha,” Rhiow said softly, “forgive him: he’s such a snoop. And a bit besotted with ehhif culture. He’s far better than the rest of my team at reading their writing, even without the Speech to help him: it’s become a hobby. Back home he’s endlessly translating their posters andads, whether we want to know what they’re about or not – “

“And menus, I suspect,” Hwaith said, with a sly grin.

Rhiow’s whiskers went forward. “Au, cousin, you have no idea,” she said. “The foods he’s gotten me interested that it was far better I didn’t know about…” She looked back over at Ssh’iivha. “But forgive me: you were telling us about the fire that started when the earthquake hit – “

“Well, it’s all a bit strange, isn’t it?” Ssh’iivha said. “Those poor homeless ehhif – They do get into the backlot, over some wall, or through some freight gate that’s open a few minutes longer than it should be. There’s so much of the lot, they can easily move from place to place and avoid the ss’huhio’s own security people. Not us, though. There must be a hundred People working on the Lion’s backlot, and it’s impossible for us not to be able to tell what ehhif have been where, and when, and for how long. And in the case of those poor strays, you know how they smell – “

“I do,” Rhiow said. “I have a few under my care, back home.”

Behind them, the typewriter went ding! one more time, a page was ripped out, another was rolled in.“He’s so fast,” Rhiow said.

“You have no idea,” said Ssh’iivha. “You should see him when he really gets going. He’ll be doing that hour on hour, never gets up, never looks away from the machine. I worry about him sometimes, but there’s no stopping him: besides listening to other ehhif talk, it seems to be his life.” She let out a slightly sad breath.

“And there’s not another ehhif for him?” Rhiow said.

Ssh’iivha looked pensive. “No,” she said, “not for a while now. Not the one he wants, anyway – “

“Rhi?”

She looked up. At the desk, the silent ehhif was still typing away, but Urruah was gazing down at the the page he’d just taken out of the typewriter. He glanced up at Rhiow. “You need to see this,” he said: and he sounded alarmed.

Rhiow gave Ssh’iivha a bemused look. “I’m assuming this isn’t just some attack of fannishness,” she said. “Excuse me a second– “

She leapt up quietly onto an empty spot in the bookshelf to the right of the desk, so as not to upset the ehhif, and looked over his shoulder. He was still rattling away at top speed.“Amazing how fast one of them can work with only two toes,” she said. Her own Iaehh worked the same way, but at no speed anything like this. “So what am I supposed to be seeing?”

“That last page,” Urruah said. “No, wait a second – “

He looked at the three pieces of paper to the right of the typewriter. Rhiow felt, under her skin, the small wizardry Urruah was doing. The barest breeze moved through the room, easily mistakable for a random draft; and at the same time the topmost piece of paper slid smoothly to the side so that Rhiow could see the one under it.

“Very slick,” she said, squinting at the paper. “What am I looking for, exactly?” And her tail lashed a little. “This is just so strange…” For she was much more used to Iaehh’s laptop now, and the ehhif letters that burned up clear and sharp onto the shining page, than this strange mechanical way of putting one’s thoughts into fixed form with little hammers and an inked ribbon. Yet at the same time there was that strange, retro feeling of mass and solidity about all this, the same feel one got from the cars in front of the houses and the huge stoves in the kitchen: somethingtriumphant, a victory of intention over resistant matter. Not a wizardly mindset at all, indeed something very ehhif-ish – but you had to admire it all the same.

“Look through my eyes,” Urruah said. “It’s faster.”

She purred at his courtesy, crouched herself down compactly on the bookshelf, let her eyes go unfocused, and did the small twist and knot of wizardry that for a moment would let her share Urruah’s eyes. It always took a moment for her to synch in, for toms do not see the world the same way queens do: nearly everything has an additional edge, being judged as either enemy or potential conquest. But Urruah was both tom and wizard, and therefore knew that some things, like ehhif print, wereessentially neutral in content if not context. Rhiow squinted her eyes a little, as any Person does to see more clearly, and read on the first paper:

It is a night like any other, except that this is Hollywood Boulevard, and on the Boulevard there is no such thing here as a night like any other, as they are all different while pretending to be the same.

There is a bar on Hollywood Boulevard in the Hotel of the same name, and there the citizens and denizens of the area congregate at all hours that the L.A.P.D. allows them; which in the case of the Boulevard Bar means six AM to five AM, that hour being when they mop the floor and chuck out the denizens who are unconscious or no longer able to pay their tab— this latter category being something that must be judged nightly by Tough Therese who minds the cash register, and that on a case by case basis. It is at about four-thirty AM, therefore, that someone sitting at the bar begins to hear the many and entertaining variations on the theme of helping someone else pay their tab for them. But there is also something else that sometimes happens then, and it involves the backwash from four AM, which is when sick people are known to die and crazy people are likely to become the craziest, always depending of course on what the Moon is doing.

Rhiow shook her head until her ears rattled, trying to keep her“eyes” in Urruah’s head as she did so. “What is this?” she said. “Fiction or news?”

“It’s hard to tell with them sometimes,” Urruah said, “especially when they get into magic realism. I think maybe this is an early practitioner – “

Rhiow wanted to start banging her head into some friendly yielding surface, or whack Urruah upside the head, or both. For her“magic” and “realism” were parts of the same continuum: but Urruah seemed to be describing some kind of strange ehhif literary fad rather than the simple truth. Nonetheless – it being a simpler and possibly kinder response than just getting down out of the bookcase, walking across the back of the ehhif’s chair and hitting Urruah very hard between the ears — for the moment Rhiow just kept reading:

Now it is held as a matter of fact among the residents and clients of the bar in the Hollywood Hotel that there is a place in the middle of the great North American continent where crazy people roll across to and then mostly get stuck. It is the Continental Divide, and east of it reside the people who are pretty much sane, and in Denver reside all the people who are only sort of half crazy and having hit the Divide can go no further. But the truly nutso folk roll right over the Donner Pass and down into Nevada and Oregon and Washington and so on, but most especially into California, where there is just something that attracts them, maybe the San Andreas Fault, and the crazier they are the further they go, and the very craziest wind up in Los Angeles: and the most select of those crazies are in Hollywood.

Rhiow looked over at Urruah again, more bemused than before. He simply shook his own head, and his own not-inconsiderable ears flapped as if in a gale.“Read it,” he said.

She bent her head to the page again, glancing over when it was finished to the next one—

Now even among the Hollywood set some of the crazy people stand out, and these are mostly the ones who arrive from Pennsylvania, or Transylvania, or some other vania, with an eye to relieving the locals of their hard earned dosh. There is much of this commodity available in Hollywood, for it is a locality rich in film industry types who have acquired great heaps of the necessary along the way, and who love to be seen to fling their moolauw about the landscape in various and sundry directions, thus theoretically proving that they are worth more than the cost of the clothes they stand up in, which can be considerable. Fancy jewelry much with gold and diamonds the size of California walnuts are nothing to these swells, as are mansions the size of the Grand Central Terminal, which is very grand indeed, and therefore many of the crazies, especially those who are crazy in the manner of the fox, have hit on the conceit that all the simooleans possessed by these industry swells are no good to them, for (say the crazy-as-a-fox types) they have no inner beauty, which is to say the beauty of the soul. And these foxy types get busy selling inner beauty and meditation and strange old religions and stranger new religions to these movie people, and relieving them during the process of vast wads of cash, which is of course supposedly worthless anyway, so that this is obviously what the LAPD would normally call a victimless crime.

Now a bunch of us are sitting around the bar very late in the Hollywood Hotel: and the bunch consists of Mike the Mick, who is the doorman and opens the door for those rich swells who forget how their arm muscles operate any time they approach a portal in a place where other mortals may see them: and also in attendance is Kip the Cyp, who is not from Greece but from the island where Aphrodite rose from the waves, and so is big on handling other exotic foreign bundles that have been dumped into the water by guys with speedboats and then come bobbing to the surface again before the coppers get there and notice their provenance. And also there is Shady Harry who owns the bootleg bar out back of Max Factor’s: and with him is Dora, who is a shapely blonde and Shady Harry’s companion, and a very highly paid companion at that, one who shops at Robinsons all the day and has tea there with the Hat Ladies in the Palm Room upstairs and would not be seen on the Boulevard except in a big black car with adriver, or a guy with a bankroll the size of the big black car. And while we are sitting nursing our various beverages in the dim of the night, which is most excellently silent for the most part, suddenly out of this silence rises a great howling noise like someone who has had a few slugs put into them, though not in the lung, otherwise they would sound much more like they were gargling.

“Now who may that be?” says Shady Harry, as Miss Dora turns a very light shade of pale for someone of her comely ancestry.

Mike the Mick merely nods in a knowing fashion.“It is a nutjob or head case,” he says, “who we call the Lady in Black. She is a frail who has been coming down Laurel Canyon every month or so in this weather. She has acquired this monicker as she always wears black, and very high-end black at that, so that we think she is bankrolled by some unattentive guy up Laurel. And two weeks after the moon is full, which you cannot miss because of the noise of the other crazies who inhabit these environs, she comes down the Boulevard and commences to save our souls, whether we recollect having mislaid them or not. It is interesting timing,” says Mike the Mick, “since most of our other crazies prefer the Moon to be full. You cannot stir out of doors without hitting them in such weather.”

“I think it is some kind of marketing ploy,” says Kip the Cyp, who in real life is an accountant and knows more than somewhat about ways to get and keep the cabbage, as many studios employ him in this capacity. And since Kip has an adding machine where his heart should be, this is a smart move on the studios’ part. “I think,” says Kip, “that the Lady in Black has spotted a hole in her competition’s advertising strategy and is exploiting it.” And indeed she is exploiting it out in the middle of the Boulevard for all the market will bear, which at this hour of the morning is a considerable amount.

Since it is 3 AM and there is little other entertainment to be had such an hour except the numbers game that Georgio the Wop is running behind Delmonicos, which is nothing to do with New York’s Delmonicos but does not mind being mistaken for it, such is the wicked world we live in, the bunch of us go out through the fine polished brass revolving door of the Hollywood Hotel, the first such door on the West Coast, and make our way out onto the sidewalk of the Boulevard, which is very quiet this time of night, the dice games all having retired out behind the Grauman’s Chinese. And out there in the midst of the boulevard, where few vehicles pass at such an hour, the Lady in Black comes wandering down from where Laurel Canyon crosses the Boulevard, and she is dressed far more likea babe who has just come out of one of those night clubs downtown than any normal type of god-botherer, as such folks are more usually dressed like performers in the band than like the thrush who stands up in front of the mike and sings. The Lady in Black is walking down the middle of the white line in the middle of the street like someone doing a drunk test, but as she gets closer it can be seen that there is nothing drunk about the way she is walking, and as all the while she looks neither to left nor right or at anything in particular, as far as we can see.

The Lady in Black is making the aforesaid yowling noise like some kind of upset animal, and then she stops that noise at the same time she stops in front of the Hollywood Hotel, and she turns toward us, but like someone who sees nothing: and she says very loudly,“You are all doomed.”

“This is the usual routine,” says Mike the Mick under his breath. “She has a rant about not being friends with someone.”

“You are not the friends of the Great Old One,” she says, “and so when he comes, he will not be kind to you as he will be to his friends, who will be granted the gift of swift oblivion, but you will suddenly take leave of your bodies and your unhoused souls will writhe in torment through aeons uncounted and you will wish that you had been friends of the Devourer of Worlds, but it will be too late for you.”

“And now she will tell us the price of admission to being this Devourer guy’s friends,” says Mike the Mick in my ear, “and it will be retail, not wholesale.”

“For now at last comes the hour of the day, and the day of the year, and the year of the aeon of the Black Leopard,” says or rather shouts the Lady in Black, “and of that aeon there will be no ending, and the sheaf of sheaves of worlds will be torn open by His teeth and gulped down in His maw, and all lesser dominations even unto the God of the gods will be cast out into the houseless void, and cease to be.”

One more page came out of the typewriter and went down onto the desk, and another page was rolled in, and the machine-gun-fast typing started again. As it came down and the last words vanished under the new page, Rhiow heard something she had never heard before, and hoped never to hear again: the Whisperer yowling low in Her throat, in great and increasing distress.

The fur bristling all over her, Rhiow craned her neck to look down at the new page. Hwaith leapt up onto the bookshelf beside her. Did you hear that? Rhiow said silently, to both him and Urruah.

Hwaith’s eyes were as wide as Urruah’s were. Yes, Hwaith said: and, I wish I hadn’t, said Urruah.

“This is unusual,” says Mike the Mick. “She has not yet offered to save our souls. That is usually the blowoff that follows such a pitch.”

“For the sacrifice has been made in full, though mindlessly,” says the doll in black, as a big Ford goes by her and she pays it not a red cent’s worth of mind. “And mindfully it is made now, three times three; and the Black Leopard receives it, and the end time is set in train. Exult then, fanged ones, exult in the hour of night when the prophecy is at last made real, and the worthless worlds are made an end of, and the Black One gorges Himself full on the corpse that is all Life.”

And she walks on by us, right down that white line, and pauses at the intersection of Hollywood and Highland and then hangs a left and vanishes around the corner of the hotel. And we stand there being quiet, since though we are all always being told that we are doomed, it rarely gets done quite like this.

“Now there is a lady who is minus at least one banana from the bunch,” says Kip the Cyp.

“The City ought to do something,” says Miss Dora. “What are we paying our taxes for?”

And they all go back inside through the beautiful brass rotating door of the Hollywood Hotel, with Mike the Mick and myself being the last ones to go.“It is strange that she did not try to charge us the usual rate,” says Mike the Mick, “which always involves some kind of meeting up in the rich part of the hills and a great forking over of cash.”

“Now where is she gone to?” I say.

“Let us go see,” says Mike the Mick. “But I do not think we will see much.”

We go up to the corner of Hollywood and Highland, and as we go it commences to rain, which is a peculiar thing out of what seems like a clear sky, but then with the lights as bright as they are on Hollywood Boulevard these days, it is often hard to tell what is going on up in the aether. And when we look up Highland, there is no sign of her.

“For a doll dressed like that she moves fast,” I say to Mike the Mick.

“This I have seen before,” says Mike. “But there is never anyone there to pick her up in a car, and I sometimes think she must slip into one of the apartment buildings up Highland, but there is no sign of her doing so, and no one up there seems to know about her, for once or twice when I havea slow lunch hour I go up there to ask a few questions, and no one shows any sign of having been bought off, which I would surely detect by now.”

So we head back in the direction of the Hollywood Hotel, and Mike the Mick says,“I have seen the Lady in Black three months running now, and I do not know whether I should buy some more umbrellas when I see her, or throw them away.” Because as we walk back up the Boulevard, the street where it was raining is now as dry as any number of bones.

Now we have plenty of ghosts here but none of them can dry the street up after a rain, and I wonder whether the City should try to procure her services in the flood season. Yet if the Lady in Black is in fact producing the rain, then a joe with a smart head could use her to make a lot of moolah out of the LA County Flood Control Board. But no one can catch her long enough to figure out which side she should be working for, or against, which is annoying and also too much like life.

The Silent Man stopped typing, and stared at the paper.

Rhiow looked at Hwaith.“I thought you said it wasn’t going to rain until October,” Urruah said.

Hwaith shrugged his tail.“Poetic license,” he said. “Anyway, it didn’t rain last night. At least, not anywhere else…”

Rhiow was beyond being all that concerned about the weather. She was bristling still, and still hearing the silent distress of Hrau’f the Silent, of one of the Powers that Be, over something long-dreaded, half-expected, now coming terribly true. In the meantime, the Silent Man had stopped typing, and was staring at the half-finished page in the typewriter. I hate it when these things don’t have an obvious ending… Rhiow heard him think.

Then Rhiow stepped down onto the Silent Man’s desk, because now – however bizarre it seemed – she understood what she needed to do. She sat down by the right side of the typewriter, and stared at him until he felt the weight of her regard and looked her in the eye.

“Cousin,” she said in the Speech, “I am on errantry, and in the Queen’s name, I greet you. Now let’s talk business.”

And the Silent Man didn’t move an inch except that his eyebrows went right up.

The Big Meow: Chapter Five

You don’t look English, the Silent Man said.

Rhiow threw a glance at Urruah.“Did I miss something?” she said.

Urruah tilted his head to one side, looking thoughtful. But before he could say anything, the Silent Man said, We’ve got a lot of Brits around here. They’re real big on the Queen.

“Ah,” Rhiow said. “I take your meaning now.” She purred, slightly amused. “You mean the queen-ehhif whose territory includes London. No, sorry, not that Queen. We have one of our own, who is of…for the moment, let’s just say a higher order.”

Those very cool eyes rested on Rhiow for a moment, and the Silent Man’s hand went off to one side, as if searching for something that wasn’t there. Then he very visibly brought the hand back to rest in front of the typewriter, and put the other hand down on top of it, as if intent on keeping the first one where it was.

“Am I meant to understand,” Rhiow said, trying not to sound too threatening about it, “that you have no problem with the idea that a cat might be able to speak?”

Oh, on the contrary, the Silent Man said, I’m thinking that this all probably has something to do with the medication. They keep telling me they’re sure they’ve got the dosage right now; but every time they say that, I get some strange new side effect. He gave Rhiow a rather cockeyed look, though again it had that cool, assessing quality to it. I’ll grant you, though, this side effect’s a lot stranger than some. And I usually don’t get them this late in my day…

“I’ve been called a lot of things in my time,” Urruah said in the Speech, “but never a side effect.”

The Silent Man looked at him. One talking cat, he said, might have been an accident. Two starts to look like a coincidence–

“And three would be enemy action?” Urruah said. I wonder, he added silently for Rhiow’s benefit, should we tell him that’s what we’re here about…?

I wouldn’t rush that, ‘Ruah. Look at him – he’s a bit on the brittle side, at the moment. And tired. Let the simplest part sink in first.

The Silent Man laughed, just a barely audible hissing sound. And a smart guy, too, he said to Urruah. Okay, you’re making the case for ‘hallucination’ a whole lot stronger now…

“I’m sorry if all this strains your sense of your grasp on reality,” Rhiow said, “but sometimes, to keep that reality in good order, such interventions become necessary.” She glanced at the page in the typewriter. “It would seem that you’ve seen something unusual: something that may have a bearing on the reason we’ve come here.”

The Silent Man leaned back in his wooden typing chair, so that it rocked back a little on its base. He looked from Rhiow to Urruah and back again, and shook his head. I seem to be seeing a lot of unusual today, he said, and rubbed his face with both hands. As he let them fall, for a moment a look of great weariness and pain showed in his eyes: but a second later it had been so completely sealed over that Rhiow wondered for a second whether she had really seen it. So let me get this straight. Cats can talk…

“Some cats can talk to humans, or ehhif as we call them,” Rhiow said. “Yes.”

“But only when our business specifically requires it,” Urruah said, “as it does now.”

Okay. But how come my cat doesn’t talk to me?

“She doesn’t know the Speech,” Urruah said. “She speaks Ailurin, like most cats do.”

The Silent Man looked unblinkingly at Urruah. There are two secret cat languages? he said. Oh, come on, now, that’s one too many. What a shame: I was starting to believe you weren’t the drugs talking…

Urruah’s tail had begun to lash; but Rhiow was amused. “One of the languages is no secret,” she said. “Humans can learn some Ailurin if they’re patient and attentive. Sheba says you know a little of it. The other language, you don’t need to learn. Everything recognizes it: and it’s not justa cat language. It’s the language in which everything was made. Not all cats know it, though – not even most of them.”

“The way most of the humans you’d meet here don’t speak Italian,” Urruah said.

The Silent Man gave Urruah a dry look. You’d be surprised how many of the humans I deal with speak Italian, he said. But let it pass. He looked back over at Rhiow again. The expression was strange. So what’s all this about?

“There are some strange things happening in your city at the moment…” Rhiow said.

The Silent Man gave her a look. Blackie, he said, this is Hollywood. If strange things didn’t happen here, I’d worry.

Hwaith snickered. The Silent Man threw him a look. And you, he said. You I’ve seen here before, but you never talked to me.

“It wasn’t allowed,” Hwaith said. “Now it is.”

“What we read about in your writing there – “ Urruah said. “That would be one of the things we’re looking into.”

Why? said the Silent Man.

Rhiow tucked herself down into what her ehhif usually referred to as“meatloaf” mode. “The explanation may take some time,” she said, “and I have to suggest that you may think it’s something to do with your medication again, as many aspects of it are going to sound bizarre.”

He smiled again. All right, he said. One thing’s for sure: my medication doesn’t refer to itself as often as you do. And the other things you’re looking into – what would those be?

Rhiow threw Urruah a look. Keep it simple! she said silently.

“The earthquakes,” Urruah said.

At this the Silent Man actually threw his head back and laughed, though again he produced no sound but a kind of hiss. Rhiow thought of the hissing way Ith laughed, and again nearly bristled, but for a different reason: humans weren’t meant to laugh so. Earthquakes! the Silent Man said, rubbing his eyes again as he recovered his composure a little. They’re just like the weather, aren’t they? Everybody talks about them, but nobody does anything about them…because nobody can. But now here you folks come along, and say you can do something. What do you do?

“It’s more in the line of prevention than direct intervention, as a rule,” Rhiow said. “Quakes are difficult to stop outright. Also, like forest fires, they have their own reasons for happening – so trying to forestall them too long can be unwise. But the ones you’ve been having lately aren’t natural. We think they may be connected to something else we’re investigating at the moment.”

I suppose, the Quiet Man said, that it might strain my present credulity too far to inquire what that might be.

“Maybe we should leave that alone for the moment,” Urruah said.

Rhiow looked thoughtfully at the Silent Man.“Let’s just say,” she said, “that some of the earthquakes that have occurred recently have a kind of connection to certain places in the city: not merely a physical one. We’re in the process of investigating some of those connections, and the spots to which they’re attached. One of themis quite near here.” She looked over at Hwaith.

“Within a couple of blocks,” Hwaith said. “Just south of Sunset, near Beverly and Crescent – “

The Silent Man nodded: though the look he gave them all was a little odd.“And there are several other locations,” Rhiow said, “that we’re going to go have a look at as well. This one was closest; our colleague Hwaith here suggested that we should stop with you first to get the news. And now I see,” and she threw a sidewise glance at Hwaith, “that the choice was wise.”

So let me see if I’ve got all this straight, the Silent Man said. What we have here is a secret organization of talking cats dedicated to stopping earthquakes…

Rhiow looked up into the Silent Man’s face, amused: for he wasn’t speaking in mockery. And it was surprising to be looked at with such quick acceptance of her intelligence by an ehhif who was not also a wizard; and not just acceptance, but humor — although the humor was not only dry, but a bit chilly. This was a creature who did not waste time denying reality. Once he had accepted it, he got on with business. But then, Rhiow thought, if I’m any judge, this Silent Man has had entirely too much reality to deal with over the past few years. That look of pain on his face was familiar: she’d seen it in Iaehh’s face too often of late. I must find out more about what’s the matter with him. If he’s going to be of help to us, the least we can do is return the favor.

“I’d say our remit goes a little further than just earthquakes,” Rhiow said. “Nor does the organization consist only of cats. We and numerous other species, including your own, work together to keeping this world in one piece.”

I’d say your organization’s had a close call, the last few years, the Silent Man said.

“I’d say you were right,” Rhiow said. “Many of our people were involved. Many died, trying to prevent what almost happened…and didn’t. We’re busy with that job again; or still. But the scale is considerably larger.”

Larger than the Second World War? said the Silent Man.…But then, what was it she said? ‘The sheaf of the sheaves of worlds?’ Drunks and crazies repeat themselves, sometimes. But the Lady in Black didn’t look drunk. And crazy… He shook his head. Crazy covers a lot of ground. Especially in this town. His eyes glinted with cynicism. Around hereno one notices your crazy much, if your wallet’s fat enough. And there are fat wallets in plenty.

“That’s another issue,” Hwaith said. “Cults…”

We’ve got enough of those around here, the Silent Man said. … and I’d be the wrong man to ask why. Lots of people smarter than me have to have been asking themselves that question for years now. Maybe it’s just — He leaned back in his chair, waving his hands in the air in the first really casual gesture that Rhiow had seen him make since he walked in the door. This is California, after all. The Gold Rush mentality has never really died. People come here from every place where things aren’t working to get away, start over, leave old lives behind. And then when they get here, they start to find out how lonely that is. He folded his arms, leaning back further. Or they fail… and then they go looking for friends. After a while, somebody tells them about this great place they’ve found, this temple or churchlet or secret club, where people tell you how to act, what to do to have everything come out right. The lost and failed and frightened are glad to find a place like that. Soon enough they start thinking that person who runs that place is something special. Maybe not even quite human…

The Silent Man smiled. It was a surprisingly grim look. And then the person in whom the poor patsies have placed all this trust starts pulling the strings. He or she starts getting them to do things they’d never otherwise have done. Hand over everything they own, their houses and the contents of their bank accounts. Desert their husband or wife and marry somebody they’re told to. Give up their children to be raised by someone else, according to someone’s ‘holy word’. And then, while they’re not looking, the compassionate and enlightened leader of the Ultimate Tabernacle of Divine Confusion runs off to Rio with a carpetbag full of his poor dumb disciples’ money.

“Maybe,” Urruah said, “such people — the victims, anyway — are just looking for meaning in their lives.” He flicked a glance at Rhiow, not having to say aloud what she knew he was thinking; that it was hard on a species not have any clear sense of whether or not the One existed. To be sure, there were People who didn’t believe in Queen Iau, but not many; a far more common reaction for holders of the feline worldview was simply to have no time for Her. Independence ran deep in the feline psyche, sometimes enough so that a given Person might feel her or his essential felinity was best expressed by denying the authority of Deity — if necessary, to Her face. There were numerous stories among People of the Queen dealing kindly, even humorously, with such free thinkers…knowing them to be intent on being true to themselves and their nature. But such defiance was not an optionthat would’ve been open to Rhiow; it would have been an essential denial of a command structure that she had long accepted.

In a world full of death and pain, the Silent Man said, a world full of lies and corruption and theft and cruelty, where good people get cheated and bad people prosper, can you blame them?

“Hardly,” Hwaith said. “Nonetheless, despite how well they might mean, such innocents can still do great harm if they’re led into it. Or misled.”

“Which brings us to your Lady in Black,” Rhiow said. “Your friend had seen her often before. But no one tried to follow her before? No one had tried before to find where she’d come from?”

If they tried, the Silent Man said, my sources didn’t mention it.

“I think we should find out,” Hwaith said.

Rhiow lashed her tail.“I concur. The things she spoke of – “ She flicked an ear at Urruah. “There are some troubling implications.”

What, you mean besides the destruction of the‘sheaf of sheaves of worlds?’

Urruah laughed under his breath at the ehhif’s dessicated humor. “You wrote that your companion said she’d been seen three months running – “

That’s right. Always a couple weeks after the full moon.

“In other words,” Hwaith said, “when the moon’s dark.” She gave Rhiow a thoughtful sidewise look.

Rhiow’s tail lashed. Moondark was not an unequivocally dangerous time; but when the Tom’s Eye was most tightly shut, there was a tendency for the darker influences to scurry about and make themselves noticed, like rats scratching and running inside the walls of the world. And for straightforwardly natural reasons, the new moon’s one of the nodes of the month that favor earthquakes…

“You said that she was yowling,” Urruah said.

The Silent Man nodded. Godawful noise, he said. Kind of like a cat. No offense.

“None taken,” Rhiow said. “And then no sooner had she delivered her message than she went around the corner and simply vanished.”

That’s the way it looked.

Rhiow flicked an ear backward, then forward, considering.“There’s a place we need to visit as well, then,” she said. “We may be able to throw some light on where she came from, or where she went.”

She sat up.“Perhaps we might make your home our base for a short time while we conduct our investigations?” Rhiow said. “Sheba’s told us the ground rules: we won’t seem different to your neighbors from any of the other People who visit you here. And we won’t overtax your hospitality.” Will we, ‘Ruah?

Urruah half-closed his eyes and let his glance wander sidewise. Officially this was“strategic aversion”, a gesture of agreement or conciliation to a more senior or dominant Person in a pride. But Rhiow noted in combined amusement and annoyance that the direction in which Urruah’s eyes slid included the food dishes out on the terrace…which turned the gesture into more whatan ehhif would have thought of as an eyeroll.

The Silent Man naturally noticed nothing of this. You kidding? he said. I’d prefer you stayed. That way I can test whether you’re still so voluble when I’m off the pills. Hang around just as long as you like.

“One thing, though,” Hwaith said. “The writing you just did – Cousin, would it be intruding to ask what your interest in the story is?”

You mean, besides seeing it happen in front of me? The Silent Man stretched, leaned back in the chair again and folded his arms. This town is all about surfaces, he said. And light. The light of day, and what shows when the flashbulbs pop. When something pokes through a surface– or else only puts in an appearance at night, when the light’s poor, and the things come out that can’t stand daylight or publicity – then that attracts my attention. It’s been that way for me for a long time now, and maybe it’s a bad habit. But it’s a hard one to break, this late inthe day.

Urruah stood up and stretched too, giving the Silent Man an approving look.“I think we have something in common there,” he said. “Night’s our time. Though we’re not beyond hunting in daylight when the circumstances call for it.”

“Which is a business we should be about,” Rhiow said. “If you have a map, and can show us the places from which the Lady in Black appeared and then disappeared, we’ll go have a look.”

Why waste time with maps? the Silent Man said, pushing back from his desk. I’ll show you myself.

Rhiow stood up as the ehhif did. Well, she said, a little concerned, we wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble —

Besides, might be smart to have some cover. You guys can’t just go parading around down there by yourselves, after all. There are people and dogs and traffic…

“Oh,” Urruah said, putting his whiskers forward in amusement, “dogs… I wouldn’t worry about the dogs. In fact, if I were them, I’d worry — ”

Could you cut out the tom stuff for a moment? Rhiow said silently“Actually,” she said aloud, “though your concern does you credit, you needn’t worry: no one’s going to see us unless we want them to.”

You mean you can vanish or something?

“Urruah?” Rhiow said.

Urruah, his whiskers forward, jumped down from the desk, turned around to face the Silent Man, and then took a step sideways, sidling as he did so. He took his time about it, and went so far to control the effect that his face, set in what an ehhif used for a grin, lingered slightly longer than the rest of him before it disappeared.

The Silent Man didn’t even blink. Now I know some people who’d find that talent a whole lot too handy, he said, as Urruah slipped back into visibility again. Probably better that the technique stays under wraps.

“So you see,” Hwaith said, “we’ll have no problem avoiding notice.”

Sure, the Silent Man said, but that has to take some effort.

“Well, it does,” Urruah said, “but – “

And why should you bother? Everybody around here knows Sheba. She goes out with me all the time. Why wouldn’t she bring some of her chums along for a stroll on the Boulevard? Nobody’d think twice. This is Hollywood, and you’re with me.

Urruah began to purr so loudly that Rhiow was surprised the windows didn’t rattle. “Cousin,” she said, “you’re kind to want to save us trouble.” She put her whiskers forward. “And I confess, it’d be fun…”

The Silent Man glanced at his watch. Come on, he said. We’ll go down there, have a look around at the first couple of your places, grab an early lunch.

“But you’ve been out all night,” Rhiow said.

Couldn’t sleep now if I tried, the Silent Man said. Besides, now you’ve got me wondering about some things I missed at first glance. Wouldn’t mind asking a few more questions myself. You can tell Sheba what we’re planning, I take it?

“Of course,” Rhiow said. “I think she’ll be delighted.”

“It’ll be something of a walk down to Hollywood and Highland – “ Hwaith said.

Walk? The Silent Man looked at Hwaith with a cockeyed expression. Are you from here? Who walks in LA?

And that was how they wound up being driven into the heart of Hollywood in the back seat of a sky-blue 1941 Lincoln Continental, by the Silent Man himself.

Iau only knows what the neighbors think of this, if they’re watching, Rhiow thought as she and Urruah and Hwaith wandered down the pathway to the street in Sheba’s wake.

And when we’re talking, said the Silent Man, as he opened the car door, no one’s going to be able to hear us?

“No one we don’t want to,” Urruah said. “You’ll want to make sure your mouth doesn’t move when you’re saying something, that’s all. We can hear you subvocalizing just fine.”

The Silent Man shook his head. All right, then, he said. We’ll go down to where I saw her, have a quick look around. Then you’ll let me know what else you need. Everybody in…

Sheba, long used to the drill, leapt up inside and curled herself down comfortably in the front seat, opposite the driver’s side. “It’s so much fun to do this and know what’s going to happen for a change!” Sheba said. “And it’s great to go down to town: everybody’s going to make a big fuss over us. Now I know that leather back there is slippery, but try not to sink your claws in any deeper than you need to on the curves. You won’t have to hang on very hard: he’s a careful driver…”

Rhiow jumped up into the broad back seat and looked around her with surprise. Rhiow’s experience of ehhif mechanical transport until now had been limited to the occasional New York cab, when her own ehhif had taken her to the vet for checkups and so forth. But this roomy solidity took her by surprise, and the luxury of the fittings: they were real leather, real wood. Rhiow was,however, also surprised by some of the omissions. No seat belts? she said silently to Urruah, as he and Hwaith jumped up behind her, and the Silent Man shut the door. Have they repealed the laws of physics on the highways here?

Urruah’s tail was waving from side to side as he sat down beside her. It took the ehhif a little while to wrap their brains around the concept of auto safety, Urruah said. Or that they would have to pay more for it. I’ll grant you, these cars aren’t as safe as the ones at our end of time. But they’re handsomer…

For her own part, Rhiow would happily enough have exchanged any amount of handsomeness for the knowledge that the occupants of the car she was riding in weren’t about to be thrown all over the place if something hit it. But as the Silent Man got into the driver’s seat, started the car up and pulled away from his house, she felt a little reassured: he seemed to be driving very slowly indeed.

“Can’t be doing more than twenty-five miles an hour,” Urruah said under his breath. “Looks like we’re riding with someone who actually takes the local speed limit seriously….”

And it seemed that he was right. After a minute or so, as they turned a corner, Rhiow relaxed enough to stand up on her hind legs and put her forepaws up against the bottom of the rear window. The car slid down yet another street lined with broad sidewalks and houses set well back from the street behind well-watered green lawns, then turned yet another corner.

Even the house-lined streets they’d been in until now were fairly wide: now they had come out on a wide boulevard that looked at least as broad as a New York avenue. It was lined with low buildings, mostly shops and stores and the occasional hotel or bank or other office building.

“Oh, now look at this,” Urruah said, in the kind of voice one would normally reserve for suddenly seeing something of great beauty or wonder.. He had somehow managed to get the back window on his side open; and now he was sticking his head out of it, staring at something they were passing. Rhiow dropped to the seat again and looked over to the other side of the car, seeing what looked like a long red bus.

“It’s a hRhed Kharr!” Urruah said. “Oh, Iau, thank you for letting me see this!”

Rhiow was tempted to simply squeeze her eyes shut and stop watching: Urruah was so far beyond delight at the moment that she suspected he was on the point of letting his tongue flap in the air like a houff. All she could do was put her whiskers forward at the sight of the amused ehhif looking down at him from the“Red Car”, which it turned out was no bus, but some sort of trolley that slid demurely past them on rails. Rhiow sat down by Hwaith and said quietly, “Cousin, you’ve got to forgive him: he does believe so deeply in complete cultural immersion…”

Hwaith’s whiskers were forward too. “Rhiow, it’s not a problem,” he said. “Where would our tourist industry be without tourists?” The Red Car glided away in a splendor of sunlit crimson, and Urruah was already craning his neck to look at something else.

Hwaith, for his part, was looking thoughtfully at the back of the Silent Man’s head. About a hundred things you didn’t say to him just now, Hwaith said silently.

What…about the strictly spiritual side of things? Probably it’s wiser to keep our conversations with the Whisperer out of the ehhif public domain for the moment. He’s a hard-headed one, the Silent Man: but I wouldn’t stretch that hardness too far just yet.

And what about his“Lady in Black?” You have some suspicions about what she might be, I think. What are you going to tell him about her? Or should I say “it?”

Rhiow’s eyes widened, and her tail lashed. Hwaith had quickly reached one of her own conclusions, one she very much hoped was more pessimistic than the reality. I’ll bite that rat’s throat when we’ve caught it, she said. Especially since there are almost too many suspicions, at this point…and even the Whisperer didn’t sound as if She was eager to see the worst of them vindicated.

But will She, though? That’s the question.

The unnerved sound of Hwaith’s thought made Rhiow look at him with some concern. This part of the world, Hwaith said, has its own peculiarities. Plenty of wizards, to be sure. But there are old powers and influences here that can bubble up without warning…and when they do, it can take considerable intervention to quiet them down again. He looked out the window, blinking, as if the light suddenly bothered him. That’s how my predecessor on the gates went; old Fu’ahh. He stumbled into a sinkhole in the hills – a pool of old power that had gone live in response to something some ehhif had stirred up. Hwaith’s tail was lashing now, and his eyes had gone veiled over an expression of anger and pain. We never did find out what caused that flareup…

We might now, Rhiow said, if we keep our eyes open, and watch what we do.

Hwaith gave her such a look of naked gratitude that Rhiow hardly knew where to look, except away. There’s something I hadn’t known. How lonely has he been since he lost his mentor? Does he think it’s his fault somehow? This may complicate things…

The car slowed, stopped. Rhiow looked up and out the nearest window, and was glad to see a distraction: a strange iron shape rearing up behind one of the buildings on the south side of the boulevard, near the middle of the block. It made her think of the top level of the Empire State Building, marooned by itself on the ground and looking rather out of place. Urruah caught her glance.“A radio tower?” he said.

What? That monstrosity? Not a chance. Look at the size of it. That’s the hot new thing…or so they tell us. Television. The Silent Man shook his head.

Urruah stared.“Really? Surely it’s too – oww!“

He turned and looked over his shoulder at Rhiow, who had just reached up and stuck a claw in his butt. She narrowed her eyes at him. You were just about to tell him some of the future? Don’t get carried away here!

Too what? the Silent Man said.

“Uh, sorry. Too small for a TV antenna?” Urruah said.

The Silent Man laughed that hissing laugh again.“TV”, he said. Cute. Too small, though? This one screws up the local skyline more than somewhat as it is. Paramount had a heck of a time getting the city to give them permission for the thing – but finally they got their way. Though whether they’ll be glad about that in ten years, who knows? There’s maybe three hundred television receiver sets in LA. Most of them belong to people with a lot of money. What do you expect when one of the things costs a hundred bucks? The rest are homemade – one of the transmission companies that was trying to start up actually mailed out flyers to people with instructions on how to build their own receivers. Don’t know what kind of takeup they got.

The Silent Man shrugged as the signal changed and he pulled the sedan into the intersection for a right turn. I think W6XYZ there is just a loss leader: Paramount’s using it to get more attention for its movies. They’ve been trying to get a commercial license for the service for years now, but the government’s had a whole lot of other things to think about. Now that the war’s over, though — You ask me, the radio people have been greasing some palms in Washington to keep things just the way they are. Don’t see why they’re worried, though. He smiled one of those cynical smiles that Rhiow was already getting used to the sight of. Who’d sit home squinting at a blurry movie on one of those little dinky tubes when you can go for a night out with your doll and see it in a beautiful gilded picture palace? And the only other thing they’re talking about doing on television is some kind of program with a host interviewing people. They’re calling it a ‘talk show’. Who’s going to spend a hundred bucks on a box that just shows peoplesitting around talking?

“Who indeed,” Rhiow said. She glanced over at Urruah again. Are you settled down a little, now? Can you please remember what decade you’re in?

Uh, yeah. But, Rhi— Urruah climbed carefully onto the back of the front seat, balancing there next to the brim of the Silent Man’s hat and peering forward through the windshield. Then he leapt down into the front seat beside Sheba. Our guy here is really enjoying talking to someone without having to run it through paper first. Big pieces, or little ones…

Yes, Rhiow said, I gathered that. There was something else about his tone that was jogging her memory. The Silent Man’s voice reminded her of the way Iaehh sounded, some evenings, when some colleague from work called him: as if he wanted to keep them talking past the mere business at hand – the sound of someone afraid of the silence that would eventually fall, a silence that had once had another voice in it, now no longer to be heard except in memory. And even memory fades…

Here we go, said the Silent Man. We’ll park here and walk over. He pulled up to the curb, killed the engine, and stepped out of the car, opening the back door on the curb side for the rear-seat passengers.

Rhiow and Hwaith jumped down onto the sidewalk and stood there, glancing around them, as the Silent Man reached in to get Sheba out, and Urruah followed.“This is where it happened?” he said.

“This is it,” said the Silent Man, settling Sheba comfortably on his shoulder. He headed up to the corner, and stopped there.

Rhiow and the others followed him, pausing to gaze upward at the astonishing structure that took up what had to be at least the next half of this block of Hollywood Boulevard and reached well back along Highland.“This,” Rhiow said to Hwaith, “…is a hotel?”

“One of the better ones,” Hwaith said.

It occurred to Rhiow that taking it all in was going to require some time. But then I’m used to New York hotels. Relatively small buildings, in terms of the space they take up on a block…and relatively sedate. Whereas it seemed that the only thing this building’s architect had lacked was sedation. The place was a complex vista of white stucco and red tile, with a confusion ofterraces and porticoes and awnings and cupolas and even what appeared to be a couple of dome-topped bell towers. The terraces and balconies on the Boulevard side were set back from the street by a couple of sidewalks’ width of plantings, and sheltered – if that was the word for a building so exhibitionistic – by a row of fine tall palm trees.

Quite something, huh? said the Silent Man.

“Unique,” Rhiow said, putting her whiskers forward.

“Spanish Revival, they call it,” Hwaith said to Urruah as they stood there gazing up at the little tiled portico that sheltered the entry to the Hollywood Hotel’s bar.

Revival? Rhiow thought.…Possibly because it fainted after they woke it up the first time, and it saw what had happened to it…? She waved her tail in a gesture of irony that she hoped would be lost on a watching ehhif, and regarded the portico. HOLLYWOOD HOTEL CORNER, a sign above it proclaimed, as if seriously thinking it could redefine the nearby intersection in its own terms. “So this is where you came out,” Rhiow said, “and saw the Lady in Black…”

This is the spot.

“Good,” Rhiow said, as she caught sight of two small mostly-white shapes coming along toward them under the palm trees. They were looking at Rhiow with interest, and slight confusion. Sightseeing, Rhi? one of them said silently. And out in the open? We done here already?

Arhu’s tone was surprisingly edgy, in marked contrast to the sound of it just a couple of hours ago. Siffha’h was walking quite close to him, a kind of body language that Rhiow had started to recognize as suggesting that she was troubled by her brother’s rattled state.

Not just yet, Rhiow said. Granted, the situation looks unusual, but bear with me for the moment. We’ve turned up something interesting with this ehhif’s help. Some kind of apparition was out here before dawn… possibly even a revenant. But the only ones who saw it were ehhif. We need a better look.

Arhu glanced curiously up at the Silent Man as he and Siffha’h came strolling up to the group and paused at the corner. For his own part, the Silent Man looked at them almost without surprise. More of your people, Blackie? he said to Rhiow.

“The younger members of our team,” Rhiow said. “This one, Arhu, is gifted in a particular way that will be helpful to us. He sees what’s going to be…”

“Which is useful,” Arhu said, “but sometimes not as useful as seeing what’s been.” He looked over at Rhiow. “How long before dawn did this apparition turn up?”

“Maybe two hours before the Eye came up?” Rhiow said to Hwaith. He waved his tail “yes.” “Four AM, as ehhif reckon it. See what you can See.”

“Got to do something about this traffic first,” Siffha’h said, and sat down at the corner, looking out at the intersection.

All the traffic lights promptly turned yellow, and then red.

Now that’s a gift, said the Silent Man, as the traffic in all four directions came to a halt.

Arhu sidled himself and wandered out into the intersection.“Give me five minutes,” he said.

The Silent Man watched with interest, backing up to lean against one side of the tiled portico, like one ehhif casually waiting to meet another. On his shoulder, Sheba settled herself down with her paws pressed together, and closed her eyes. Don’t think you’ll have that long, said the Silent Man, shaking his head as he looked for any sign of where Arhu had gone. They’ll start jumping the lights…

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Siffha’h said, and closed her eyes.

A sudden odd silence fell over the intersection as all the cars’ electrical systems failed in unison, for perhaps a mile in every direction.

The silence didn’t last more than a few moments: all around the traffic lights, drivers started getting out of their cars, pulling the vehicles’ hoods open, staring into the complex innards in complete bemusement, and (in some cases) exercising their vocabularies most creatively. But Arhu paid them no mind. Inmid-intersection, he sat himself down, curled his tail around his toes, and stared in an unfocused-looking way at the cracked concrete there.

Rhiow didn’t have anything of the Eye herself, but to a watching wizard, the influences involved in its use could obscurely be glimpsed. For a few seconds, the imagery of previous hours whirled around Arhu as he felt about with his mind for the specific moments of past time that were needed. He overshot a bit at first. Filmy cars seemed to run over or through him at high speed, gauzy pedestrians jittered back and forth in the background; the memories of recent days and nights alternately spotlighted or shadowed Arhu. He didn’t move, not even his tail twitching, as the imagery faded, went unchangingly dark around him. And then he looked up, gazing down Hollywood Boulevard.

“There,” Arhu said.

They watched her come, moving through and past the brief here-and-now traffic jam as if it wasn’t there: but then again, last night, it hadn’t been. Down the white line she came, exactly as described. The revenant was a thin, pale apparition in the broad sunlight of day, and hard to see; but there was no mistaking her. She was tall and elegantly dressed and empty-eyed, walking with a stately and icy precision, her eyes seeming fixed on some goal that the people around her had given up their right to see. The expression of cold-set scorn on the queen-ehhif’s face, and the feeling of revulsion and rejection that flowed from her, gave Rhiow a chill down her back.

She glanced up and saw with some surprise that the Silent Man’s eyes were fixed, not on Arhu or the traffic jam, but the remembered vision of the night before. But then he was here, Rhiow thought. That alone could make it possible for him to see an induced recurrence.

Possibly feeling Rhiow’s regard on him, the Silent Man glanced down at her. That’s a good trick, he said.

“We’ll see if it’s going to be good enough,” Rhiow said. Closer and closer the vision came, straight down the white line, walking right through one of the live ehhif who was standing with his hands on his hips and staring at his stalled car in disgust. He got an odd look, that ehhif, and heshivered all over: in the mid-morning warmth, he took off his hat and mopped his brow as if suddenly sweating cold.

On the Lady in Black came, and stepped out into the intersection. Another second or three and she would walk right through Arhu. But he looked up, catching her eyes with his: and in mid-step she froze where she was.

In that instant the vision went sharp, clear and dark. Around her the pavement went black and wet; beyond her, night and streetlights could be seen. Rhiow didn’t move, for fear of distracting Arhu. But she looked closely at the Lady in Black. As ehhif went, Rhiow suspected that this particular queen would be considered extremely beautiful. Yet there was also something strange about her, a sense that the physical form she wore was as relatively unimportant as some item of clothing.

Rhiow looked harder, as Arhu was doing. He had gotten up now and stretched himself, and was walking around the queen-ehhif. Perhaps Rhiow caught a touch of his examination more directly, now, for as she looked at the ehhif’s shape, inside it, only half-seen, some odd force seemed to twist and writhe. What’s going on there? Rhiow wondered, her ears starting to go back. It’s as if –

She’s not really there? Arhu said silently, pausing to look up at the woman-shape from behind. He was bristling, the hair on his back all spiked up, and his tail was starting to fluff. Good guess. No scent, Rhi. She’s a shell. She’s been soulsplit.

Rhiow growled softly in her throat, angry and unnerved to have her and Hwaith’s suspicions independently confirmed. A few ways did exist to denature a body’s connection to its soul while the body was still living – not exactly a severance, but the next best thing, exempting the soul from passing along the consequences of its actions to the body in which it belonged. All these methods were dangerous, and except under very specific circumstances, all of them were illegal for wizards to use, either on other beings or on themselves. There were, of course, some ways besides wizardry to produce the same effects. Either way, the hapless practitioners tended not to stayalive long enough to spread information about the techniques very widely. But where soulsplitting was being employed, there were also usually other closely affiliated abuses of power to be found: and all of them were favorite tools of Sa’rr?hh’s, when the Lone One thought she could trick some poor mortal creature into using them.

Is her body still alive, do you think? Hwaith said.

Don’t know, Arhu said. She sure doesn’t care. This soul’s completely taken up with thoughts of what she’s warning us poor bystanders about. His tail was lashing. And she’s enjoying the thoughts, let me tell you. She really hates everyone and everything here, and she just can’t wait to see this whole state fall right off into the Pacific.

Rhiow hardly found that surprising. Many beings who underwent soulsplitting did so because they thought that liberating the soul from the body while still scheduled to be alive would allow them access to some“higher”, purer, less emotion-dominated state of being. But all too often matters went the other way entirely, usually because the creature initiating the split didn’t fully understand the deeper reaches of the relationship between soul and body — the way the physical side of existence acted as a check on the less safe or sane urges of a spirit still connected, however tenuously, to physical timeflow and its consequences. Arhu, Rhiow said, is it safe to query her? For us, and for her connection to her body? Whatever state that might be in…

Arhu walked back around in front of the Lady in Black, watching her closely, and sat down again. I’m holding this revenance out of the timeflow for the moment, he said. It’s probably safe enough to ask her a few questions. But I can’t keep Seeing her this way for long: and even if I could, it might not be smart. Something else is watching her too, Rhi. Whatever it is, it’s inside time, and shouldn’t have any perception of this frozen moment. But I’d rather not press my luck.

All right. Ask her: who is the Great Old One?

Arhu said nothing aloud, merely looked at the queen-ehhif’s apparition. She spoke no word in response, moved not at all. But at a long chilly remove, as if it were being bounced back through several stages of some immaterial relay, the answer came: He is the one from outside, older than all Gods: their inverse, dwelling in the Void. He is the darkness before any word, and the silence into which all words spoken must die. He is the End.

Rhiow licked her nose. Urruah, now sitting by her, looked out at Arhu. Ask her, Urruah said, who is the Black Leopard?

Another long silence: longer this time, Rhiow thought. He is Tepeyollotl Night-Eater, Lord of the Beasts of the Dark, the answer came back, who is called into time to devour all things: and to the darkness beyond time and timelessness he will return when all is devoured. He is the Herald of the End.

Rhiow and Urruah looked at each other. Each of them could feel the Whisperer, silent for the moment, listening through their ears and minds: and they could feel the tension in Her as if it were their own.

Rhi, Arhu said, can you feel something in this neighborhood watching this? Not that close by. Not actually taking an interest as yet. But it might–

Urruah looked out at the intersection, his tail waving slowly from side to side, his ears down. Ask her, what is the meaning of the sacrifice that has been made?

An even longer pause this time. It is the opening of the way into the realities that are fouled with life. It is life spilled out to enable the entry of the Great Old One into the worlds he will rule and destroy. It is the beginning of the End.

Rhiow stared at Urruah, the fur going up on her back…as, on some other level of reality, the Whisperer’s was doing. And Hwaith, standing by Rhiow and Urruah now, looked out at Arhu. Ask her, he said: where did you die?

Rhiow looked at Hwaith in shock. And this time there was no delay whatever in the answer. I have not died. I can never die! Yet I am done with the world of bodies, one with the Black One forever, safe in His darkness! It was almost a shout of triumph, the first answer holding any passion that this image of the Lady in Black had produced. Yet– was there fear in that voice, too?

— and beneath it, so faint that Rhiow’s ears twitched forward as if to hear it better, a faint desperate cry like the mewl of a kitten trapped down a sewer: Laurel –

And the fur abruptly stood up all over Arhu. That’s enough! he said, hurriedly backing away from the Lady in Black. On the instant, the rainy night that had seemed to cling about her was gone. She was a ghost again, pale in the hot sunlight, and moving again, walking down the centerline of Hollywood Boulevard, past them, around the corner, and up Highland past the Silent Man’s blue car. And then she was gone.

Arhu made his way back to the sidewalk and sat down there, still sidled. He started washing, and it was very much the composure-washing of someone eager to put himself to rights before their ehhif guest could see him.

What happened there? Hwaith said.

Arhu paused in his washing and shook his head as if someone had clouted him upside the ear. Whatever was listening…all of a sudden started listening a whole lot harder. If it’d heard much more, it could have realized who was looking at it, and from when. Not something we want anyone to know right now, I’d think.

He was unnerved. Rhiow put her head down, bumped heads with him, though she was unsure how much reassurance she could truly offer Arhu in a situation like this: she was unnerved enough herself. You did right, she said. There’s another spot we need to look at, down the street: but it can wait a little.

No, Arhu said. No, I’m all right. He shook his head hard, so that his ears rattled: when he looked up, a little of the normal insouciance was back.

This soulsplit, Hwaith said. How long ago would you say it happened?

Arhu’s tail twitched with uncertainty. Hard to say. That soul could last have been in a body as long as…two, maybe three weeks back –

Around the time the earthquakes started, perhaps? Hwaith said.

Arhu looked at him thoughtfully. Could be, said Arhu. It’ll take a little more checking to find out. We’ll need to go back up the hill and have another look at that spot where the gate’s trying to root. I didn’t have any idea, the first time, that we were going to find this connection…

Rhiow sat down by Siffha’h and tried to keep her own bristling under control. Wonderful, she thought. Another problem we didn’t need. For now the question arose: had the Lady in Black invoked this unsavory state of existence of her own free will, or had she had it wished on her? If she had, she had to be helped out ofit. If the soulsplit had been her own idea, she still had to be offered the opportunity to remake the choice. Assuming her body isn’t already quietly decomposing somewhere up in the hills, Rhiow thought, or being digested inside any number of coyotes. Why in Iau’s name do ehhif seem so eager todo this kind of thing to themselves?…

Meanwhile, here they all stood in the sunshine, with the ehhif of the past going about their business in their fat solid shining cars, and in the big red trolleys that passed by with a cheerful clangor of bells when pedestrians threatened to get in their way, or some auto turned across an intersection in a trolley’s path. The fronds on the palm trees off to their right rustled and glinted in the sun, and everything nonetheless seemed very unreal… especially with the direct experience of the Whisperer’s unease just a few minutes before. Rhiow let out a long breath. “Come on,” she said to Arhu, “get yourself unsidled: we’ve got to work out what to do next. Siffha’h – “

Siffha’h glanced down the road. Barely a second later, one of the engines in one of the cars some ways back in the traffic jam turned over. Other drivers, noticing, got back into their cars; within moments, more and more engines were revving all up and down the road.

Siffha’h got up then, stretched, and turned and walked away from the intersection. Behind her, the lights changed to green, and gradually traffic on Hollywood Boulevard started moving again. Behind one of the palm trees, Arhu came out of invisibility and wandered out to join the others.

The Silent Man watched him as Siffha’h went over to bump noses with him. So would someone tell me what that was all about? he said.

Rhiow was trying to figure out just how to do that, and how much to tell.“Half a moment,” she said. “I still have to finish debriefing our two youngsters. Was there somewhere else we were going first?”

Down by the Chinese– that other address you were interested in. It’s only a block or so.

“Let’s head down there, then,” Rhiow said.

They walked down Hollywood Boulevard, past the frontage of the hotel. It was a pleasant stroll in the sunshine, and amusing enough because of the ehhif they passed, who looked with utter fascination, sometimes with laughter, at the procession: the little man in dapper gray with a white cat riding on his shoulder, surrounded by a bodyguard of four more– the gray tabby in the lead, two black cats and a small white calico-patched tom strolling on either side of him, and another calico-patched white bringing up the rear. Cars on the Boulevard, having been sitting still for the better part of fifteen minutes, now actually slowed down again to watch them all pass by. Rhiow flirted her tail in wry comment as they made their way along the Hollywood Hotel’s palm-lined front terraces. To Arhu she said, Now tell me: what did you find up by Laurel and Highland Trail that left you so on edge?

The gate’s sunk a root there, all right, Arhu said, silent. But not deep: not yet. He sounded unusually grim.

Then what’s the trouble?

Someone died there, Rhi. An ehhif. Not long ago.

Siffha’h came up alongside her twin and put her tail over his back as they walked. The gate-root was tunneling straight down into where that life spilled, she said, sure as a seedling drilling down for water.

Spilled? Rhiow said. Actual bloodshed?

Siffha’h wrinkled her nose in disgust and distress. No question. A Person with no nose could have smelled it.

And a Person with the Eye, Arhu said, could see it.

That explained Arhu’s grimness well enough. Nearly murdered with his littermates when hardly more than a few weeks old, Arhu’s relationship with death was a thorny one, and probably would be for some lives yet: that kind of trauma could take a good while to move through. And —

Laurel, Rhiow said. She said“Laurel” —

Arhu looked at her, both angry and confused. No, he said. No matter what she says, I’m not sure the Lady in Black is really dead. And anyway, she’s not the one I saw killed.

Rhiow stared at him. Are you sure?

The Eye doesn’t lie: not when it’s looking back. Forward’s another story. The dead ehhif up on Laurel was a tom… But he still looked confused. Trouble is, Rhi…what we all saw, just now, still smells to me of that death up the hill.

They all walked on to the next intersection, where the sidewalk bent around a gardeny area marking the end of the hotel’s property. I could make the predictable joke about tongues, said the Silent Man, glancing down Orchid Street to see if any traffic was coming. But you’d probably thank me not to. What did Patches here find?

“We think,” Rhiow said, “perhaps a murder.”

Is that so.

Rhiow looked up in surprise at the sudden intense interest in the Silent Man’s voice. His eyes were on her, and they were suddenly much more alert than they had been.

“It’s early to tell, yet,” Urruah said from where he’d fallen in beside Rhiow. “Always a mistake to start theorizing before you’ve finished examining the evidence carefully….”

The Silent Man smiled. Another student of the Master, he said. Well, this makes the spot we’re about to visit a little more interesting.

“Why?” Rhiow said.

But the Silent Man just shook his head as they crossed Orchid. Rhiow wasn’t given much time to press the issue, for as they came up onto the curb of the far corner, Urruah stood stock still for a moment at something he saw…then broke into a run. Tourists and business people and casual strollers on that sidewalk looked with surprise or amusement at the big gray tabbythat ran helter-skelter down among them, stopping in front of what seemed from this end of the street to be some kind of big empty plaza. Urruah stood staring into that space as intently as if it were some kind of delicatessen.

The Silent Man glanced down at Rhiow, a wry look. Tell me he’s a film fan, he said, in the tone of an ehhif now prepared to believe just about anything.

“There are a fair number of us,” Hwaith said. “More than you might suspect…”

The Silent Man reached up to rub Sheba behind the ears as they walked after Urruah. Now why in the world would you be interested in the movies?

“Because we appreciate a good story as much as you do,” Hwaith said. “Even when it’s full of all that boring human stuff.”

The Silent Man looked just briefly nonplussed. And the glance Hwaith threw Rhiow then was so wicked that, despite her concerned mood, she still had to stifle a laugh. She was still working at retaining her composure by the time they all caught up with Urruah, or rather, with the spot where he had been standing.

There before them lay a wide space filled with strange differently-colored patches of concrete. Curved walls decorated with fanciful-looking flowery sculptures embraced this forecourt on either side, ending in two archways peaked with odd prickly-topped towers; each was sheathed in greened copper, and flared up into peculiar spiky crowns. At the rear of the concrete-filled plaza were bronze doors guarded by a couple of huge statues of what Rhiow at first took to be houiff— though there was something leonine about them as well, so that she was strangely reminded of the statues of Hhu’au and Sef outside the New York Public Library. Above the doors, done on a huge plaque of gray stone, was a massive curling carving of some kind of fireworm; and above it all, borneup on coral-colored columns, rose yet another high sloping copper roof with yet more spiky ironmongery cornices at the corners.

Rhiow looked around for Urruah, expecting to see him amongst the ehhif tourists, dawdling among the footprints he’d told her about earlier. But he was out of sight.

“Sidled,” Hwaith said over her shoulder. He was right: a moment later, Rhiow caught sight of Urruah under one of the huge dog-beasts, the one on the left-hand side of the doors. He had his head down, sniffing at the concrete, and his striped tail jerked once or twice as if in distaste. Then Urruah straightened, sneezed, and turned to walk back to the waiting group.

“Blood,” Urruah said to Rhiow, and looked up thoughtfully at the Silent Man. “Ehhif blood. Absolutely no mistaking it.”

The Silent Man nodded slowly. About two weeks ago, he said. It was the middle of the night when they found the body. The management were keen to cover it up. They were worried it’d be bad for business.

“Two weeks would match the dating on the merely physical scent,” Urruah said. He looked at Arhu.

Arhu, though, had his ears back in what for him was a rather uneasy expression: and he looked over at Rhiow.“Rhi, I’d rather not do an in-depth search here right now. I’d be nervous that whatever was starting to pay attention to me a few minutes ago might have more of its attention drawn here. That could make trouble for us later.”

“And he’s tired,” Siffha’h said, and bristled at Urruah. “Leave it till later.”

“Wait a minute, I’m not that tired! It’s just that – “

Siffha’h cuffed Arhu in the head, claws in. “Don’t give me that! Didn’t you just tell me that – “

“Never mind what I told you, would you just stop mommying me?”

“It’s not mommying to – “

The yowling, quiet as it was, was beginning to draw amused looks from some of the ehhif around.“Arhu,” Rhiow said. “Sif. Enough.”

Fortunately they knew that tone of voice, and stopped. Both of them immediately sat down and started washing, though in different directions.

Maybe we need a break, the Silent Man said. I promised you folks lunch. How about it, babe? He reached up again to rub Sheba behind the ears.

Sheba reached out and patted his cheek with one paw.“Did he just say the food word?” she said. “Tell him we should go to the place with the wooden back room and the table with the window!”

Rhiow passed this on. The Silent Man grinned. She’s got taste, he said. Let’s go back the way we came. It’s a few blocks further on: we don’t need the car.

He led the way at a brisk walk: and all the People fell in behind him at a trot, amused by the attention of the ehhif they passed, but refusing to acknowledge it. Rhiow, behind the Silent Man, glanced over at Urruah as he caught up with her.“Don’t say it,” he said.

“What?”

“I was fanboying.”

“For the ten seconds you spent over it,” Rhiow said, “not Aaurh Herself could have chastised you. So I was hardly going to start.” She glanced down Orchid as they crossed it and made their way past the Hollywood Hotel again. “Besides, I felt sorry for you.”

He looked at her in surprise.“What? Why?”

“Well, the circumstances weren’t exactly optimal, were they? The first time you see this place in the flesh, and you have to be all business? You’d have liked to get right down and roll around on that concrete, all over those famous ehhifs’ pawprints. Don’t deny it.”

His whiskers were twitching.“Well…” he said.

Hwaith had come up on Rhiow’s other side: he glanced over at Urruah. “When we’ve got our business sorted out,” he said, “we’ll come back here and I’ll introduce you to the backstage crowd.” He put his whiskers forward. “And the queens.”

Urruah gave him a sidelong look.“Thought I caught a few ladies’ scents up front…”

Rhiow walked a little slower and let the two toms drift ahead together to talk shop: though she didn’t miss the glance Hwaith threw her way as she dropped back. A nice young tom, she thought, mulling over again what he’d mentioned about the loss of his mentor. I guess I see why he might have seemed a little nervous to start with…especially with the circumstances being, again, not exactly optimal. But he’s working in all right. She paused, as the others did, at the corner of Highland and Hollywood: in front of them, as Siffha’h’s tail flirted idly, the lights changed with near-unseemly haste.

Across the road they started passing more normal-looking buildings than the concrete-forecourted theater and the histrionic hotel. Shops and stores, the occasional granite-faced bank; and then suddenly, without warning, the smell of roasted meat occurred as they came up to a wooden storefront with square-paned windows. Rhiow’s mouth began to water as the Silent Man opened the door and held it for the People to walk in.

I will not run, I will not run, Rhiow thought: but she didn’t loiter, either. Inside the door it was very dark and cool, compared to the rapidly warming day outside: and everything smelled of meat, and fish, and smoke. The floor was of wood, and all the walls were paneled, with rows of tables and benches covered in red leather, and a counter down the right-hand side. Just in front of where the Silent Man stood was a wooden podium, and behind it stood a tall balding ehhif in a suit.

“And who’s this functionary?” Rhiow said.

“It’s a maitre d’,” Urruah said. “He tells the ehhif where to sit.”

The ehhif’s expression didn’t look like that of anyone who seemed about to issue orders, though, once he set eyes on the Silent Man. “Well, good afternoon, Mr. Runyon!” the maitre d’ said. “And the lovely Miss Sheba as well. So nice to have you.”

“It’s so nice to be recognized,” Sheba said to the others, over the Silent Man’s back. “Once they get to know you here they’re very good. Wait till you see – “

“—But we don’t often have the pleasure for seating you for lunch,” said the maitre d’: “it’s just as well you got here early. Would you prefer to be at the counter today, or your usual table?”

The Silent Man shook his head, reached into his pocket and came out with a small notepad and pen. On the pad he scribbled something quickly, held it up. Rhiow craned her neck to see.

GOT MORE COMPANY TODAY. SIDE TABLE BACK ROOM?

The maitre d’ peered to either side of the Silent Man, briefly confused. Down by his feet, though, Rhiow looked up and said, just loudly enough to attract an ehhif’s attention, “Meow.”

The maitre d’ looked down in great surprise at Rhiow – then saw, behind her, Urruah and Hwaith and Arhu and Siffha’h, all sitting around the Silent Man’s feet, looking absently in various directions and wearing the universal expression of bored people waiting in line.

“Well, my goodness,” the maitre d’ said. “This would possibly be Miss Sheba’s fan club?”

The Silent Man grinned, scribbled on the pad again, ripped the page, held it up. VISITING TALENT FROM OUT OF TOWN. GOT ENOUGH CHAIRS?

The maitre d’ allowed himself a slight smile as the door behind them opened. “I’m certain we can manage. How many menus?”

“Is there room for one more?” came a female voice from behind them.

The Silent Man turned, and his eyes widened slightly. So did those of the maitre d’.

In through the restaurant door came undulating a tall slender figure in red, her raven hair coiled up loosely under a wide-brimmed red hat that slouched down over one eye. Rhiow, catching the other eye, put her whiskers forward, then glanced up at the maitre d’ and the Silent Man as the lady in red paused before the maitre d’s podium.

“Rrrrrrowrrrr,” Urruah said, amused, and not particularly under his breath.

Ewwwwww! Arhu said silently. Interspecies stuff! You are beyond perverse.

“I’m so sorry to be late,” Helen said to the Silent Man, “but I took a wrong turn on the way here.” From those dark eyes, Helen gave the maitre d’ a look that could have been described as “smoldering” if it hadn’t been so amused.

The Silent Man glanced down at Rhiow. Without moving his lips, he said, Are you going to tell me that this lady’s in your organization too?

“Yes,” Rhiow said, amused.

Where do I join? he said. The Silent Man’s eyes went back to Helen again: he held his hand out, smiling.

“Since you’re helping us,” Rhiow said, “I think possibly you’ve joined already.”

Helen took his hand.“Helen Walks Softly,” she said.

And carries a big stick, I bet, the Silent Man said as he shook Helen’s hand.

“Normally,” Helen said in a demure whisper, “a gun. But I’m not packing today.”

A gun, huh, said the Silent Man. Funny. You smell like a cop. But they don’t give lady cops guns in this town.

Helen didn’t even blink. “There are other places where a lady can be a cop,” she said: which was true enough, if a misdirection. “As for how I smell, I guess you missed the ‘Evening in Paris.’”

A slow grin spread over the Silent Man’s face. Come on, doll, he said, as the maitre d’ left his podium and headed for the back of the restaurant.

They passed through the front room, followed by the unavoidable stares and laughter of the ehhif already seated there– though Rhiow noted that as many of the stares, interested or envious or sometimes both, were directed toward Helen’s dark good looks as toward the trail of cats behind the Silent Man. In his wake, they all walked into a secondary room with an arched and painted ceiling covered with autumnal outdoor scenes. A bar ran down the right side of this room, and more tables along the left side: and about halfway down was a door into a third room, smaller and more shadowy than either of the first two.

The maitre d’, Helen and the Silent Man went through. This room was as darkly wood-panelled as the others, but was also, to Rhiow’s surprise, nearly full – the front of the restaurant had still been half empty. And the tables were almost entirely occupied by men, most of whom looked up with great interest as Helen walked in behind the maitre d’. Helen gave them all the kind of gracious, cool look that visiting royalty might have bestowed on a crowd of visiting lackeys, and then turned her attention to the table where the maitre d’ had pulled out a chair for her.

It was an excellent spot for them: round, with one side of the table edged into a lace-curtained bay window that looked out into an unassuming back yard space, more a service area than a patio. The window had a high window seat cushioned in red leather: perfect for ehhif children, or People. Urruah and Hwaith leapt up and seated themselves next to Sheba as she jumped down from the Silent Man’s shoulder onto the window seat. Siffha’h and Arhu jumped up next to them. Rhiow leapt onto the window seat’s far side, closest to Helen: and on Helen’s other side, the Silent Man seated himself with his back to the rest of the room, where no one else could see whether he was moving his mouth or not.

“I take it,” Helen said, “that back here, the press won’t be too much in the way?”

The Silent Man smiled at the sound of a question that might as logically have come from some publicity-shy starlet. He put his pad down, scribbled on it briefly by way of camouflage, while saying silently, I wouldn’t worry about it. There’s nobody back here but writers.

Helen smiled, laughing softly. Across the table, Urruah looked over the Silent Man’s arm as he opened the menu. “Steak,” he said. “Liver. Salmon. Brook trout…” Rhiow looked away, eager not to see him actually drool.

“Your usual, sir?” said the maitre d’.

The Silent Man nodded. The maitre d’ turned to Helen. “A glass of wine, perhaps,” she said.

“And for Miss Sheba and her friends? Cream, perhaps? Or is it too early in the day?”

Rhiow was hard put not to laugh out loud.“Cream all around,” Helen said, “by all means.” She smiled at the Silent Man. “Would you like me to handle the orders for the other side of the table?”

The Silent Man nodded, smiled.

The maitre d’ took himself away. Urruah was purring already. “I foresee a very interesting afternoon…” he said.

It’s already been a fairly interesting morning, the Silent Man said. Visited one murder site and had hints about two more.

“Well,” Helen said, “I’ve just come from the live files section at the LAPD.” She was using the Speech now, but in such a way that no one in the room but the People and the Silent Man could hear her. “If we’re discussing the same two murders – the ones at the Chinese, and the one upat Laurel and Highland Trail — then they have something unusual in common with six others that have taken place in the last month.”

Six others? said the Silent Man. Since when does this town have eight murders in a month?

“Since now. And every one of the bodies, when found,” Helen said, “had had its heart cut out.”

Coffee arrived for the Silent Man: he ignored it. Saucers of cream were placed in front of all the People: they paid them no mind, staring at Helen. Helen bestowed a brooding look on the glass of wine that had been brought for her: it was red, like blood.

“Cheers,” Helen said.

The Big Meow: Chapter Six

The light in the back room shifted and mellowed as lunchtime passed; the writers at the other tables drank their cocktails, packed up their briefcases and bookbags and went away: and still the People and the Silent Man and Helen Walks Softly sat and talked, the Silent Man scribbling on his pad every now and then for the sake of appearances. There had been much more cream after the initial shock wore off, and some more wine, and finally some lunch. The food had been wonderful, but Rhiow, watching the restrained and regretful way in which Urruah was washing his face after the meal, could see that he hadn’t had the inclination to do the kind of justice to his raw liver that he’d originally intended. She felt sorry for him again…but once more, she had to admit that they all had a lot more to think about at the moment than food.

Helen lifted her second glass of wine as the Silent Man drank about half his fifth cup of coffee at a gulp.“You should really cut back on that,” she said. “It’s going to make a mess of your nerves.”

They’re a mess already, the Silent Man said. And this beats the alternative. But he put the cup down. Look, I could use a map of this, and a timeline. It’s been too much bad news at once.

Helen nodded and started moving plates and glasses around on the table, and pushed off to one side the gloves she’d shed when the food arrived.

“Six more murders,” Arhu said. “And all ‘unaffiliated’ ehhif, out-of-pride types…”

“Transients,” Helen said, “or people who had no relatives or interested others who’d have noticed or cared when they vanished.” As she spoke, Helen started drawing with one finger, apparently idly, on the tablecloth; but where her finger passed, precise narrow lines started to show up on the linen, sketching out a bare-bones rendition of the area between downtown and the Hollywood hills, with Wilshire Boulevard the spine of the map, and various cross streets and avenues sprouting out of it on either side, like ribs from that spine. “Here, and here,” she said, adding a dot in onespot and another on either side of Wilshire, near the center of downtown, “ – these were the first ones. About a month ago. Both males, both apparently long-term vagrants who stayed in residential hotels down in the old Skid Row area, both in their early fifties. They both used all kinds of names at the places where they stayed, so neither has been positively identified. In this man’s case, they’re still trying to find dental records: in this one’s case, there was no way to find them.” She glanced up at the Silent Man. “I didn’t mention, when we started: his head was missing, too.”

He had been scribbling on his pad as Helen drew, making a copy for himself. Now the Silent Man paused. Now why on Earth?

Helen shook her head, kept drawing.“Here, and here,” she said, adding a couple more dots, again on either side of Wilshire but closer to Hollywood, “the next two. One of them was an escapee from one of the local psychiatric institutions, a man in his late sixties, possibly someone mentally or developmentally impaired. The hospital he got out of was a fairly tight-security kind of place: it’s hard to tell how he got loose. That would have been about three weeks ago.”

“When the earthquakes started,” Siff’hah said, leaning over the edge of the table to watch Helen draw.

“That’s right. The fourth one may have been another escapee, but from a different hospital. Same general presentation as the other victims, though. Found on waste ground – a vacant lot behind a bar, in this case – heart cut out.”

“Was that what killed him?” said Arhu.

Helen gave him a slightly cockeyed look.“That would do it for most of us, I’d think.”

“Oh, come on, I know that! I mean, was that how he was killed? Or did something else happen before he died and then they took his heart out?”

“Oh, sorry. No, nothing else happened, as far as the coroner could tell.” The look Helen gave Rhiow suggested that she was regretting the vast difference between the kind of forensics that would have been available in their home time and the kind available here and now. “The only possible alternate cause of death, in a couple of cases, was alcohol poisoning: or in one case, drinking booze that had been contaminated with denatured alcohol.”

Old-fashioned bathtub gin. Or else Sterno drinking, the Silent Man said, still scribbling away at his pad. Common enough behavior among the poorest bums down on Skid Row. The‘canned heat cocktail’ is pretty popular down there.

“The coroner didn’t think either of those victims had drunk enough, or were drunk enough, to have died of what they drank,” Helen said. “His opinion was pretty much that whatever was used to cut their hearts out had done the real work.”

“They were all cut out?” Hwaith said.

“As far as the coroner could determine,” said Helen. “There was some question in the case of the headless man: I’ll get to that shortly. But the instrument used seemed to have been the same one in all cases: and it was very, very sharp. The autopsies all comment that the wound edges were assharp as if a scalpel had been used. But no one makes scalpels with such big blades, or so strong: the incisions go right through the breastbone in every case.” She looked grim. “The coroner was getting very disturbed about that by the time he got to the fourth case or so. He said in one reportthat it was like someone had done this many, many times before, and was practiced at getting a heart out in just a thrust, a cut and a twist.”

They used to be big on that kind of thing down in Central America, weren’t they? the Silent Man said. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why nothing remains of those civilizations.

Helen threw a glance at Rhiow. He’s quick, she said silently. Aloud she said, “I’ve heard other reasons. Changes in the local climate, disease… But they were definitely into some behaviors that we’d think of as unhealthy.”

This, the Silent Man said, reaching out with his pencil to tap one of the dots Helen’s moving finger had left on the tablecloth, this is unhealthy. This is not the kind of thing that happens in L.A. And he frowned. But the Lady in Black did mention what’s his name…

“Tepeyollotl Night-Eater,” Rhiow said, “Lord of the Beasts of the Dark.” She could still hear the Whisperer’s distress at the mere sound of the name.

“Mesoamerican without a doubt,” Helen said. “I’m no expert, but the name sounds Azteca to me.”

Rhiow looked over at the Silent Man, feeling his growing unease and thinking how to continue along this line without freaking him out. The immediate association of cults with serial murder isn’t yet common in ehhif popular culture this early in the century, the Whisperer said in Rhiow’s ear. He may find this line of reasoning too bizarre to accept…

Nonetheless it seemed to Rhiow that the concept had to be broached.“We were talking about cults, back at the house,” she said. “Have you perhaps heard of any cult in this area that’s been trying to revive some aspect of the old Aztec rites?”

The Silent Man gave her an uneasy look. One that would take to killing people…as some kind of religious ceremony? he said. This many people?

“It’s not a very palatable idea, I’ll grant you,” Helen said. “It seems that many of the peoples of Central America enacted various forms of human sacrifice. In the beginning, at least some of them said they were trying to re-enact a sacrifice they thought the gods had originally made forthem, in order to save the world. But it may have started as a development of what we call sympathetic magic. Take something personally associated with another human being – a lock of hair, a fingernail paring – and you can obtain various kinds of power over them. Take the concept a step further, by offering a divine being something profoundly important to you – your blood, your flesh – and you obtain a different kind of power over them. The gods are obliged to repay the favor by giving you something you want.”

The Silent Man frowned at the table, his expression quite still.“What one sacrifices personally is one matter,” Helen said. “Other cultures share similar concepts. But later on the Mesoamerican religions started to change. People less often offered their own blood…and much more often, someone else’s. In time the sacrifice became a way for populations to stay stable, for nations to dominate each other or dispose of captives of war. Later still a nasty inversion happened: wars were started to acquire enough captives to keep the sacrifices going. And the Aztecs were the people most enthusiastic about doing such things in large numbers.”

The Silent Man shook his head. But why would people do that now? What in the world would they hope to gain?

“Maybe nothing in this world,” Arhu said. “The Lady in Black hated everything she saw here. She thought that whatever she’d been doing had made her some friend outside of everything.” His tail was lashing now. “A friend who was going to put an end to it all.”

Urruah had for some while been sitting upright with his eyes half-closed, looking like an angry Egyptian statue, and saying about as much. Now he opened his eyes a bit more.“I’d prefer it too,” he said, “if all this was just down to some crazed psychotic ehhif with a deathwish that he’s projecting onto everyone around him.” He turned to look at the Silent Man. “But I don’t think we can afford to ignore any explanation, no matter how distasteful. Any one might be the right one, and we don’t dare blind ourselves to spare our tender sensibilities. There’s too much at stake.”

Their eyes locked. After a long moment, the Silent Man let out a breath, looked over at Helen again. There were two more? he said.

She nodded.“Here, and here,” she said, adding two more dots on either side of the skeletal map. One of them was much further north from Wilshire than any of the others. The other was much further along, past Hollywood proper and further into the mountains still. “Sixteen days ago,” Helen said. “An old homeless woman – the only woman in this new group – and a middle-aged man with a police record, a burglar. Both dumped, like the others, on waste ground.” She folded her hands on the tablecloth and sighed.

Everyone was quiet for a few moments, considering the map.“That missing head,” Hwaith said after a few moments. “I keep thinking about that. I mean, not that taking their hearts isn’t bad enough, but why the head too?” He flicked his ears sideways and forward again in bemusement.

Helen shook her head.“That was the most problematic case in the group,” she said, “since the heart wasn’t removed in the same way as the other ones were. That poor man’s ribcage had been almost completely crushed: at first the police thought he’d been run over by something. But the coroner’s report suggested side-to-side crushing. He didn’t know what to make of it, especially since there were no tire marks or anything similar to be found on the body. There was some speculation in the file that the dead man might have been involved in some kind of industrial accident – but that wouldn’t have accounted for the tearing that the rest of the body experienced. And what kind of industrial accident involves first crushing your chest and then pulling your heart out?”

Tails were lashing all around the table, the exception being Sheba’s: the discussion of the technicalities of the situation had prompted her to have an after-lunch snooze, an impulse that Rhiow could completely understand but had to resist. In particular she was keeping an eye on the Silent Man, who was still looking rather unsettled.

He pulled in a long breath, let it out. There’ve been whispers on the street for a few weeks, the Silent Man said, that the police have been up to something. Some of the citizens around town — the ones whose businesses the police might, shall we say, be more than somewhat interested in — have been theorizing that some kind of big operation was under way. But no I think we can guess what that is.

“They’ve been concentrating on keeping the whole cluster of murders as quiet as they can,” Helen said. “That none of those killed have had close relatives to start making noisy inquiries and raise the profile of their deaths has made matters much simpler. But the police are still tremendously edgy.”

Can’t blame them, the Silent Man said. The war hasn’t been over that long. Everyone’s still getting used to “business as usual”. The last thing the cops want right now is something that would suggest they’ve been loosening up on the quality of local law enforcement now that the country’sgone off a war footing. Especially since now there are all these new boogeymen looking over the horizon: communists, fifth-columnists… Way too many scary things going on out in the big mean world for people to get into a panic about. The police would go out of their way to keep things quiet in a situation like this. Especially when they don’t understand what’s going on.

He sighed and stretched in his chair, then bent a curious eye on Helen. You sure did a full morning’s work, the Silent Man said. Just how’d you get all this stuff?

“By not being noticed,” Helen said, very demure.

The Silent Man gave her one of those small thin smiles. In that getup?

“I’ll grant you,” Helen said, “this wouldn’t be my preferred business attire.”

The Silent Man’s smile got a shade broader. I might have wondered if you were really a cop before, he said, but I’d say that doubt’s resolved. You’re as good as any cop I know at not giving a question a straight answer. He eyed Helen. ‘Not being noticed,’ huh. The way these guys do it? He nodded in Rhiow’s direction

Helen glanced at Rhiow, who put her whiskers forward, amused.“There are similarities to the way they and I operate,” Helen said. “But you don’t always have to vanish to get things done, or find things out. When I had to, I simply looked like I was supposed to be wherever I was. I do a good secretary imitation when I have to. And no one suspects a secretary who’s going through the files.”

Hide in plain sight… the Silent Man said. Always a sound method.

“All we have to do now,” Hwaith said, “is work out what connection this all has to our main line of inquiry. The earthquakes — ”

“Hwaith,” Rhiow said, “not that I’d argue that point with you at all. It’s vital. But we’ve got a whole lot of information to assimilate, all of a sudden…and for some of us it’s been quite a long day.” Rhoiw glanced around at the other People around the table. Like many toms, Urruah’s endurance wasn’t all it might be, and that blinking lazy look he was now starting to wear wasn’t the one he normally affected, but genuine sleepiness. Sheba was still gently snoring. Arhu and Siffha’h, though sitting upright, were now leaning against each other with half-closed eyes in what Urruah had some time ago christened “the bookends pose”, trying to appear as if they were merely in a state of lazy alertness: but Rhiow knew how likely this effect was to be ruined by one of them actually dropping off to sleep, which would immediately trigger the other into doing the same.“And our host, too, is off his normal schedule. Since he’s been kind enough to offer us a place to rest, maybe we should take advantage of that, and come back to the subject fresh this evening.”

Blackie, the Silent Man said, pushing his coffee cup away, I hate to admit it, but you said a mouthful. He pushed his chair back, glanced toward the outer room.

Then his eyes widened.

“Really? In there?” said a high female voice from the main room, carrying effortlessly over what remained of the low hum of conversation there from the latest of the lunch crowd. “I’ll go right back!”

In unison, Siffha’h’s and Arhu’s eyes flew open, and they sat up straight. Urruah’s eyes opened more slowly, but the whole look of him had suddenly gone strangely attentive. Hwaith, near him, sniffed the air once or twice…and his ears went back slightly, the expression of someone resisting the urge to a much less subtle reaction.

In though the door from the main room came a young, slim, slightly-built queen-ehhif. She was fair-haired, the hair tucked up in a peculiar looped style underneath yet another of those hats— this one a close-fitting, slantwise business in a startling peacock blue, with a bizarre confection of blue veiling and blue-dyed fluffy feathers trailing back from it. Her dress, too, was blue, with a bouffant skirt that rustled noisily every time she took a step, and was perhaps as wide againon each side as she was.

She came clicking along toward their table on delicate little high heels. Rhiow, watching her come, thought that she was probably very pretty as ehhif reckoned such things: but there was something about her face, and about the set of the vivid blue eyes, that gave her pause. I’m not always expert at figuring out their faces, she thought; Iau knows their expressions don’t work anything like ours. But Rhiow couldn’t get rid of an initial impression of a calculating mind behind the innocuously pretty look. “Why, Mr. Runyon,” the queen-ehhif said as she came to stand, or rather pose, by the table, looking them all over, “how unusual to see you here! And what an unusual gathering! Where are the PR people?”

The Silent Man simply looked up at her…and then at something else. Rhiow had noted and dismissed the big straw bag embroidered with bright-colored straw flowers that the queen-ehhif was carrying over her shoulder. But now in the bag something moved, and Rhiow’s ears went right forward as the scent that had been masked by all the food-and smoke-smells in here became much plainer, and a Person put her head up out of the bag.

White fur, fluffy: ears set apparently permanently in a bad-tempered sideways slant: green eyes, watery: a nose that ran. It was surprising to see a Person of so broad-faced a breed somehow managing to look so narrow, pinched and unpleasant. Maybe it’s that poor squashed nose, Rhiow thought. How does she breathe through something like that?

The Silent Man, meanwhile, was eyeing the queen-ehhif in much the same way he had when one of the waiters had turned up at their table with the wrong meal. He reached for his pad and pen, though not with any great speed. Meanwhile, the bag-Person was looking over the other assembled People with a peculiar heavy-lidded mixture of disdain and envy that left Rhiow surprisingly unwilling to greet her.

But Urruah’s unshakeable sense of his own superlative quality as an uber-tom would hardly let him stay silent in the face of a new queen, no matter how tired he was. “Hunt’s luck to you, madam,” he said to the Person in the purse, letting an appreciative purr get into the greeting.

Those green eyes dwelt on him for a long, appraising moment before the mouth opened. What came out first, though, was a huge yawn: and after that, when they’d all had a better view than they needed of the gullet behind the yawn and the jaws had closed with a snap, and the green eyes looked at Urruah once more and then at the rest of them, a word came out.

“Peasants,” the bag-Person said, closed her eyes, and sank out of sight.

Rhiow flicked one ear back and forth in a“Why am I not surprised?” gesture. Urruah sank back onto the banquette, wounded but keeping that purr going by way of concealment. Hwaith looked mortified, and turned his face away. Arhu and Siffha’h exchanged a glance. I could tear her a new one, Arhu said to Rhiow. Come on, Rhi. It’s too late now to spoil anybody’s appetite…

Just you be still for the time being until we understand what’s going on around here!

“But what a surprise to find you here having a tea party with the kitties!” said the queen-ehhif. Her voice was of the light tinkly sort, which sorted oddly with the hostility that seemed to be peering out from behind the words. “And with a friend! It’s lovely to see the rumors aren’t true that you’re completely heartbroken. Or beyond a little more cradle-robbing.”

The Silent Man stopped dead in his writing for a moment, staring very hard at the pad. Then he finished what he was writing, ripped the page off with a touch more force than was strictly necessary, and held the page up.

SCRAM. DOING BUSINESS HERE.

“But Giorgio sent me back here on purpose to visit you and your lovely pussies!” the she-ehhif said, looking, not at any of the People, but at Helen. “Maybe I can see why.”

Helen looked up demurely from under that hat, all dark-eyed inscrutability, and said nothing.

“Why don’t you introduce us?” the she-ehhif said.

The Silent Man looked away and pointedly had another drink of his coffee.

The she-ehhif looked at Helen, put out a white-gloved hand.“Anya Harte,” she said, with the air of someone who expected the other party to know the name as a matter of course.

“Miss Harte,” Helen said, and reached up to shake the hand held out to her. “Helen Walks Softly.”

“Why, how wonderfully…ethnic!” Miss Harte said, turning away from Helen to smirk at the Silent Man. “You know, you’re just going to be confirming what everyone’s heard about your exotic tastes in the ladies.” She somehow managed to make “exotic” sound like a bad word. “But then it’s to be expected, I suppose, as what you’re used to by now. Your wife’s a Spanish countess, after all, no matter what some people say! And where is Mrs. Runyon, by the way? It’s been so long since we’ve seen her around.”

The Silent Man just looked at Miss Harte. Finally he reached for the pen again, aware that in the shadows of the door into the main room, people were standing, trying not to look as if they were watching. He scribbled for a moment, tore a page off the pad and held it up.

OUT OF TOWN

“I’m sure she is,” Miss Harte said. “Well, while the cat’s away! – so to speak.” She smiled what even Rhiow could have told was a poisonous smile for an ehhif, if her whiskers hadn’t already been practically vibrating with the sense of happy spite that emanated from the woman.

Miss Harte turned on Helen a look that was as simultaneously dismissive and envious as the expression of the Person in her bag.“Are you in the business?”

“The only one that matters,” Helen said, still smiling.

Miss Harte sucked in a long, happily scandalized breath.“Oh, my!” she said. “And you’re so open about it! But I’m sure you’ll do very well at it, with your dark good looks.”

“Thank you,” Helen said, that absolutely imperturbable smile shifting not a fraction. “But better an honest darkness than night masquerading as the innocent day.”

At that Miss Harte blinked, but only for a second.“And you recite your lines so nicely, too! You should really come out and meet some of the really important movie people, so that you can get out of the bit-part rat race! A whole lot of the people from the big studios are going to be up at the party at Dagenham’s tonight. It’s an open party,Mr. Runyon would have no trouble getting you in, there are lots of people who’d love to see someone like you there – ”

Rhiow sat there in wonder listening to that little tinkly voice, which seemed able to imply something cruel or cutting with practically every word. It made her think of the sound that broken bottles made when dumped into the Manhattan garbage trucks early in the morning: little razor-sharp shards, raining down, every one of them capable of slicing you deep if you would only pick it up the wrong way… “Oh, do come along to Dagenham’s tonight, Mr. Runyon! They’d be ever so surprised to see you.” Some further nasty implication lay behind the words: Rhiow was uncertain whether she wanted to know just what. “And just for a laugh, you should bring all your little friends!” The People were included in the glance, but the word seemed mostly for Helen.

“Dagenham’s?” Helen said, looking over at the Silent Man.

He shook his head, shrugged.

“Oh, you must know Elwin Dagenham, he does freelance PR for Goldwyn and Paramount and everybody, and he’s so successful at it, he has a lovely big house up in the hills, there’ll be just hundreds of influential people, and all that champagne and caviar! He has the most wonderful caterers, butthen he would have to, with all the important people he knows, you can’t serve them just anything – ”

Miss Harte went prattling on, and the Silent Man watched her, apparently politely enough. But watching him, Rhiow could see– if the queen-ehhif couldn’t – that there was absolutely no engagement in his eyes. His regard of Miss Harte was entirely the detached look of a scholar examining some exotic and faintly repulsive life form. For her own part, Rhiow started to wash her face, and used the moment to steal another look at that dress. She wasn’t entirely clear about ehhif fashions of this period, but the top would have seemed cut fairly low in her home time. “’Ruah,” she said to her teammate with a sidewise glance, “is it just me, or is this queen-ehhif – “

“ – for here and now, dressed in a way that’s just a yowl short of rolling on the ground and waving her ffiyth in the air?” Urruah said. “Absolutely.” He glanced out toward the front room. “No wonder the maitre d’ wanted to get her out of sight. There would be some ehhif queens who dress that way around here, but not in daylight, and not in respectable places…”

The broken glass just kept on tinkling down.“…and you know, Mr. Runyon, it would do you good to get out, after all, we so rarely see you out in good society any more! It’s such a shame. I know everyone’s sure it’s your work keeping you so busy, but you’ve had such difficulties lately…”

The Silent Man held quite still again. Then he reached down to his pad: wrote, scribbled, tore the page off and displayed it.

MIGHT JUST DO THAT. FOR A LAUGH.

Rhiow, looking at the cool ironic set of his face, strongly suspected that the Silent Man had his own opinions about who the laugh would be on. But Miss Harte clapped her hands in glee.“Oh, how wonderful! I can’t wait to tell everyone! And you’ll bring Miss Softly with you? Oh, please say yes!”

“I might have something to say about that myself,” Helen said in that low musical voice of hers. Rhiow blinked, and saw Urruah’s eyes widen, as he caught what Rhiow had. Has she been spending too much time with us? Urruah said privately, amused. That was nearly a growl.

Your highest praise for an ehhif, isn’t it usually? Rhiow said, amused too. That with some work you could make a Person out of them? “However,” Helen said, “yes, I’ll come. It might possibly be interesting to see some of these important people.” And she glanced over at the Silent Man and dropped him just the hint of a wink.

That small thin smile came back, and Rhiow was glad to see it. Helen looked up again, and her eyes and Miss Harte’s locked.

“Well, isn’t that lovely then!” Miss Harte said. “Things will be starting up around eight, I believe: don’t be too late, you’ll miss the fun!”

And with a whirl and a rustle of crinoline from under the sky-blue silk, she went click-click-clicking away, back out through the door into the outer room. The Silent Man’s glance followed her. As soon as she was safely out through the door, and tinkling the beginning of a stream of inconsequentia at someone else in front room, his face relaxed a little: but the expression in the Silent Man’s eyes put Rhiow in mind of the look you might see on a tom who was considering a juicy spot in which to sheathe his claws at some later date.

Helen merely smiled. Silently she said to the group, Racist remarks, comments on my acting skills, and accusations of whoredom within sixty seconds of introduction! She quirked an eyebrow at the Silent Man. Possibly a record? About average for her, actually, the Silent Man said, sounding a touch relieved at Helen’s unconcerned tone. If she’d known you at all, she wouldn’t have taken so long. I’m just glad you’re not carrying a gun today.

If I was going to do something about her, Helen said, it wouldn’t be with a gun. Her grin went cheerfully feral.

The Silent Man’s smile loosened up too. Next to him, Sheba opened her eyes slightly, stretching, and then sniffed. “Is it just me,” she said, “or did I smell someone else in here?”

“Someone else was here,” Urruah said, “and did she ever smell. No wonder she didn’t want to get out of that bag.”

Sheba’s eyes opened a little wider. “Maiwi!” she said, and hissed under her breath. “That fat furball! And her nasty little ehhif, I’m sure.”

“In the so-completely revealed flesh,” Urruah said, and wrinkled his muzzle in the way a Person does when they’re sampling a scent that turns out not to have been exactly pleasant.

Hearing Sheba’s hiss, the Silent Man picked her up and started to stroke her. Sorry, doll, he said, then glanced at Helen. She annoyed about our little visitor?

“Both of them,” Helen said.

The Silent Man looked annoyed as well.‘Giorgio sent me back to see your kitties,’ he said. If that’s true, Georgie-boy doesn’t get his usual fat tip today, I’ll tell you that.

“On the contrary,” Helen said, rubbing her ungloved hands together and then reaching out to her wine glass. “Whatever you usually give him, I think you should double it.”

They all looked at her in surprise. Rhiow looked at Helen’s hands: the gesture had been like that of someone trying to get rid of some unpleasant substance or smell.

What’s that mean? the Silent Man said.

Helen sipped her wine, put the glass down again.“I wish I could tell you for certain,” she said. “I don’t know as yet. But it’s a scent – a sense – I’ll know right away if I run into it again. And somehow I have a feeling that someone she’s associated with will have some bearing on what we’re looking into. So I’m very glad,” she said, folding her hands in front of her like someone trying to hold them still, “that you agreed to go to this party.”

Helen, Rhiow said. What is it??

I don’t know. I’m not sure. For the moment…it’s just what I said. “But I’ll give you this,” Helen said aloud, looking over at the Silent Man, “Miss Harte’s not your usual practitioner of the dumb blonde act.”

Or any other kind, unfortunately, the Silent Man said. Fired her once, after she got a job on the production of a film version of one of my stories. She couldn’t cut it. Nice face, nice figure, no one’s arguing that. But can’t act, and can’t get along with anyone who can. Never saw anyone like her for ruining a good working mood on a set.

“What was that crack supposed to mean,” Hwaith said, “‘cradle-robbing?’”

The Silent Man didn’t look up for a moment, straightening the fork and spoon that remained of his place setting. This town’s full of gossip, he said. If they can’t find something mean and scurrilous to say about you that’s true, they’ll get mean and scurrilous about the appearances. You learn to pay it no mind.

Rhiow held her tail and her ears quite still, like someone who hadn’t heard a comment, and resolved to have a quiet private word with Sheba about this issue; for the pain suddenly seemed to be simply jutting out of the Silent Man from all angles, like fur a-bristle. Heartbreak: you can just smell it. Poor ehhif…

The Silent Man rubbed his eyes. We should probably get back and get some rest, he said, if we’re going to do this shindig tonight. He paused, looking at Helen. What about you, gorgeous? If you’re with these guys, do you need somewhere to stay too? Though he looked faintly uncomfortable as he said it.

Helen shook her head.“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I’m taken care of. And under the circumstances – “ She glanced back in the direction of the main room. “I’d bet that, after Miss Harte’s little performance, somebody out there’d be all too willing to tip off one of the chattier gossip columnists if we left together.” She stood up, smoothing her dress. “So I’ll say goodbye here, until this evening. I’ll meet you tonight at your place, if that’s convenient. Say seven thirty?”

That’ll be fine.

She reached out a hand, and the Silent Man took it.“See you then.” She glanced down at the People. “You’ll be all right here?” she said to Rhiow.

“Absolutely,” Rhiow said. “We’ll see you later, cousin. Dai stiho.”

Helen waved at them all and went swaying elegantly out through the front room. The Silent Man looked after her appreciatively, though the expression was tinged with curiosity. She’s right about the rumor-mongers, he said. They’ll be buzzing after tonight.

“That’s not going to make a problem for you, is it?” Urruah said.

The Silent Man folded his napkin and put it on the table. Not one that hasn’t been made before, he said, leaning a little sideways to catch the eye of one of the wait-staff in the main room and nod at him. And some of these problems I kind of enjoy.

The check arrived and was dealt with, and the People put themselves in order and headed out after their host as he made for the front door. All around, once again, ehhif stared at them and made amused comments. Rhiow did her best to ignore them, and hardly knew whether to be amused or appalled by Urruah, who stared right back at the ehhif as the group passed, giving them a Person’s mocking version of the human smile. “You’re like something out of one of those cartoons you keep trying to get me hooked on,” Rhiow said as they slipped out into the street, where the light was slanting golden toward later afternoon. “I think the cable in your dumpster is rotting your brains!”

“Just the pressure of celebrity,” Urruah said as they followed the Silent Man back around the corner to the car.

“Oh, please,” Rhiow said under her breath. But then she let the breath out. I’m getting cranky, she thought as they all climbed back into the car. Probably a good time to take my own advice and have a long nap… She sat back and watched the scenery start to go by again. I meant to tell you, though, she said privately to Urruah: you and the Silent Man, when he was having trouble getting to grips with what was going on — that was nicely handled, back there.

Urruah shrugged his tail. It’s got to be tough, being asked to believe so many impossible things in a day. He just needed someone to talk a little tough to him and get him over the hump.

Rhiow put her whiskers forward. And to do it in a tom’s voice, she thought. He might not have taken it so well from me.

The drive back was quiet. Arhu and Siffha’h were showing the inevitable aftereffects of a moderately strenuous wizardry followed by a big meal, and Urruah and Hwaith were both looking dozy; Sheba promptly fell asleep again on the Silent Man’s shoulder as they drove away from Hollywood Boulevard. When they pulled up in front of the Silent Man’s house, the People got out and trotted toward the door with weary pleasure.

Inside, as the Silent Man closed the door, Rhiow stood looking up at him for a few moments as the rest of her team wandered off into the house to find places to rest. Possibly he felt her regard, or just saw the thoughtful waving of her tail: he looked down. Something I need to do? he said, taking off his hat and hanging it on a hook by the door.

“Rest,” she said. “You’re sure you’re all right, otherwise?”

The small thin smile manifested itself again, though edged with weariness, as he loosened his tie. You mean, has it been an unusually strange day, even for me? Yes. Am I hanging onto my sanity regardless? As far as I can tell, yes. Thanks. And he surprised her by getting down on one knee and scratching her behind the ears. Are you all right? I get a feeling some of this hasn’t exactly been a normal day’s work for you, either. Whatever your normal day’s work looks like.

She put her whiskers forward.“No,” she said, “no, it hasn’t. And it won’t be later, either, I’m sure. But I’ll manage. Sleep well, cousin.”

You too.

He headed off into one of the back rooms, with Sheba padding after him: Rhiow heard a door shut.

She yawned prodigiously, blinked, and then took a turn around the open downstairs rooms to see where everyone was. Arhu and Siffha’h had already curled up on the sofa in their normal thoughtlessly affectionate heap, and were snoring more or less in unison, with one of Siffha’h’s self-maintaining force fields cordoning off their area. Urruah had found himself a place up in the Silent Man’s bookcase and tucked himself up into a compact round furball, and was dozing. Hwaith had stretched himself out in front of the open back door and was lying on his back with his eyes closed and his paws folded across his chest.

Rhiow looked out at the afternoon lawn: all was peace, not even a bird singing. She turned and made her way back into the front room, letting her nose lead her to a windowsill spot where no other Person’s scent lingered. There Rhiow turned around a couple of times, lay down, and half-closed her eyes on the cool spare sleekness of the living space. It’s not a design feature, though, she thought. These rooms are so clean because no one’s here often enough to cause a clutter. Poor Silent Man. Iau, help us help him!

And keep the known universes from being destroyed, the Whisperer said.

Yes, Rhiow said, put her head down on her paws, and closed her eyes completely. Absolutely. That too…

Much, much later– or so it felt – Rhiow woke up, blinking, and turned her head to glance out the window. She was mildly disturbed to see by the light outside that the sun had just barely set. She felt around in the back of her mind for the part of the Whispering that kept a time-reckoning for her, comparing her personal time against the ehhif versions of it. Yes, it was still the same day: she hadn’t accidentally slept the Sun around.

Rhiow yawned. A known side effect of residence at the“wrong” end of a timeslide was a certain disorientation in the feel of your personal timeflow: your soul knew that it was in more places at once than it ought to be. It’ll pass…or we’ll finish work here and get back home, and it won’t be an issue any more. But I keep finding myself wondering how Iaehh’s doing Just the price you pay when you’re in a relationship with an ehhif…

Rhiow got up, stretched, and made her way through the living area to the doors onto the back patio. Except for her team, who were all asleep as she’d left them, no other People were in sight.

She walked through the door, which had been left open a crack. What a place, she thought, where the crime rate is so low that you can leave things open like this… The shadows were gone now, the colors of the backyard flowers and the lawn softening down into less-definite shades, drained of their vividity by the growing dusk.

Rhiow wandered off into the least-kempt part of the shrubbery at the corner of the yard furthest from the house, and once decently out of sight could tell immediately that she’d picked the right spot to take care of business: others had done so before. She went unfocused, and when the necessities were handled, slipped out of the shrubbery again to see a dark shape peering into the house through the open doors.

“Hwaith?”

The shadow turned, saw her, purred— though the purr had a rueful sound to it. “You couldn’t sleep either?”

Rhiow waved her tail“no”, a regretful gesture, as she made her way over to the house-wall and the cat food dishes. “My brain’s just too full of new information,” she said. “It only let me sleep long enough to recharge my muscles.” She sighed, stretched, and sat down, looking over the dishes. “Your day’s been even longer than ours, though. Did you get enough rest?”

“Enough for the time being. It was a good thing I was up, though: Aufwi wanted to talk to one of us.”

“What’s the matter? Is he all right?”

“He’s fine,” Hwaith said. “There wasn’t any point in disturbing you; you’d just gotten to sleep. But he wanted to let everybody know that the gate was trying to put down yet another root.”

Rhoiw swore softly.“And did it?”

“No, he managed to stop it. But he also marked the location it was trying to sink that root into. I was about to go up and have a look at the spot.”

“We’ve got an hour or so before Helen will be here,” Rhiow said. “Let me have a bite and I’ll go with you.”

She went over, checked out the dishes, chose one that had some kind of chicken cat food in it, and ate. At first, Just a few bites, Rhiow thought– but her stomach started to make a liar of her as soon as the first bite was in her mouth. This is really unusually good, she thought, you have to wonder just what they’re putting in our food, or not putting in it, uptime –

Shortly she looked up to see that Hwaith had sat down to have a wash.“I’m sorry,” Rhiow said, and had to laugh at herself as she went over for a drink. “Maybe I’ve been working harder than I thought I was…”

Hwaith purred loud and raspy at her as she drank.“Don’t rush,” he said. “I’ve got a transit ready: it won’t take long for us to get there.”

She drank, sat down, scrubbed briefly at her face.“I guess it’s easy to forget how hard you’re working when you’re out on the trail,” Rhiow said. “And then when you’re somewhere new and interesting…”

“Or old and interesting,” Hwaith said. “Time travel has its attractions, I guess. Urruah’s certainly been enjoying wallowing in the past.”

Hwaith sounded a little wistful. Rhiow got up, stretched fore and aft once more.“While you wish you could have your mundane present back,” she said, trotting over to him. “Don’t think I don’t catch the occasional thought.” She put her whiskers forward. “And I can’t blame you. Which way are we headed?”

“For the moment, just into the bushes,” Hwaith said.

He led her over to a thick patch of rhododendron on the opposite side of the yard, and slipped under the canopy of broad glossy leaves. Rhiow followed. Back against the stuccoed wall separating the yard from that of the house next door, in the dimness Rhiow saw a patch of a different darkness, paler, twilit.“Right through here – “ Hwaith said, and slipped through.

Rhiow paused for just a moment, assessing the personal gating: a securely anchored and flexible construction, a nice piece of work. She stepped through after Hwaith, glanced around.

They were standing at the foot of a moderately steep hillside; its lower slope and the ground where they stood was covered with the pale oat grass that seemed to favor unwatered spots in this part of the world. Several other small hills came down to meet the ground around them, and rather to Rhiow’s surprise, none of them had houses built on them, or even roads.

“We’re about three miles northwest of the Silent Man’s place,” Hwaith said, heading up the hill. “Greystone, the ehhif call it. Up here — ”

As they climbed, the oat grass gave way to low shrubbery and ground cover, both somewhat overgrown.“This is only three miles away from where we were?” Rhiow said. “You’d think it was much further, out in the country somewhere – “

“Well,” Hwaith said, “when these ehhif marked out their home territory, they did it with an eye to their privacy. You’ll see in a moment.”

“I keep meaning to ask,” Rhiow said as they worked their way up through the underbrush. “Where’s home territory for you, Hwaith? Are you in-pride? Or have you got ehhif of your own?”

“Oh, no,” Hwaith said. “I’ve got a den-place down in Union Station, and I’m friendly enough with the ehhif there, but I haven’t been closely affiliated for a long time now. Managing the gate even under normal circumstances is enough of a strain that I wouldn’t want to have to do that and have ehhif too. It wouldn’t be fair to them, really. And as for a pride…” Suddenly Hwaith sounded as if he was coming up against something he didn’t want to deal with too closely. “Work tends to get in the way of pride-life, doesn’t it? I mean, the gate-management end of things. If Istart thinking about changing specialties, training a replacement, it might be another story.”

She gave him a wry look as they came out between one band of shrubbery and another near the top of the hill.“Hwaith, if you’re telling me that wizardry’s impairing your tom-life, you’re doing something wrong! Better have a word with Urruah.”

He put his whiskers forward, catching her amusement.“Oh, no, it’s not like that. I’ve hardly forsaken the queens for my Art! There were one or two when I was young, sure, but work got busy, nothing really came of it…” He shrugged his tail as they made their way through the second line of shrubbery. “And later on you learn not to expect it to be a Sehau-and-Aifheh thing every time. Might as well expect to have the sky rain fresh songbirds on you with their breasts ready plucked.”

Rhiow chuckled.“Songbirds? I’d settle for chicken.” But the sudden romantic turn of phrase amused her. Sehau was a tom: Aifheh was his queen… At least that was the way the most famous of the many versions of their story went — a sung-verse variant composed by one of the greatest of the cat-bards, the one who anciently kept company with the ehhif-bard Hharo’lahn in the Isles of the West. The tale had already been old when the People first told it to the ehhif-wizards of Egypt, and thousands of subsequent generations of People retold it to any species that would listen, and to each other. Toms especially loved it, doting on its over-the-top romance and unavoidable tragedy – but then toms always tended a little toward the histrionic, as something that would increase the drama in any given song. This, though, was an opinion Rhiow knew perfectly well it was wiser to keep to herself.

They came out of the shrubbery and stood at the hilltop, and Rhiow waved her tail in astonishment as she looked across the wide broad space to a huge frontage of house, built all in shadowy gray granite. The main building was two stories high, and at least a New York short block in length– a stately procession of arcades and porticoes, terraces and peaked roofs, railed stone terraces, archways, and doors of wood and glass. “This was an ehhif den?” Rhiow said. “The pride must have been huge!”

“Not at all,” Hwaith said as they headed toward it. “Only two ehhif lived here.”

“But not any more, I take it,” Rhiow said. The whole atmosphere of the place spoke strangely of abandonment: lightless windows, overgrown grass, ragged plantings hanging over leaf-scattered garden paths.

“No, it’s still lived in,” Hwaith said, leading the way down along the frontage. “A wealthy ehhif built the place some decades ago. I mean, a really wealthy one: the founder of one of the great old industrial ehhif families that have lived here for more than a century. This was the biggest private home ever built in the city: still is.” Hwaith glanced at the building’s l long frontage of the building as they paced by it. “After the old tom-ehhif built it, he gave it to his only tom-kit. It was to be the place where the young tom and his queen would live their lives out together.”

“But it didn’t turn out that way,” Rhiow said.

At the far edge of the huge graveled space to one side of the great house, they paused, and Hwaith flirted his tail“no”. “In this town,” Hwaith said, “so many things don’t necessarily go as planned…”

Rhiow put her nose up into the air, sniffed. The scents of old growth, damp bark, shed conifer needles and peppertree leaves, mingled in the still air with scents of stale water and baked stone. But there was something else as well.“Am I crazy,” Rhiow said, “or is that – oil?”

“Not crazy at all,” Hwaith said. “Not actually on the grounds, here. But it’s close by: there’s a well down the other side of the hill. Ironic, really, since you could say this whole place was built on oil.”

Rhiow stood still and listened. Muted by the way the ground fell away, she could hear a faint, repetitive creaking noise.“Is that the well I’m hearing?” she said.

“That’s it.” Hwaith started off in the opposite direction, and Rhiow padded after him. “Anyway, down over here is where that root was trying to sink itself – “

Along the ridge of the hill, a terrace reached away from one side of the main house, stretching perhaps a hundred yards. At the terrace’s end a formal box garden began, or what remained of one. Once it had been an interlocking maze of carefully trimmed lines of shrubbery. Now it was looking ragged around the edges, even dusty. “If these ehhif are so wealthy,” Rhiow said as they paced through the maze, “it’s surprising they don’t take better care of the place.”

“It is a little strange,” Hwaith said, “but they don’t seem to be here much. Watch out for these steps – a couple of the slabs are loose.”

They made their way down a shallow stairway at the far edge of the maze, heading for a small, flat area further down the hillside, hemmed in by an incomplete circle of trees.“This is where my gate was trying to root,” Hwaith said, “at least briefly.” He stopped, his nose wrinkling. “Wait a minute. Do you smell – “

To a Person’s senses, ehhif blood had a metallic reek, instantly identifiable. Even if there had been rain to wash it away, which there had not, the scent would still have lingered in the soil for weeks, unmistakable. Now Rhiow walked slowly into the center of the ring of trees, sniffing carefully.

The scent was very old. Rhiow spent a while working her way over toward one spot in particular, near the encircling ring of trees, where once upon a time, the blood had soaked deep. But that had been a long time ago. Hwaith came up by her, put his nose down, inhaled. His tail lashed.

“Years old,” he said. “But I’d have trouble saying how many. Forensics hasn’t been my field.”

“Could this be a murder the police here missed?” Rhiow said. “Is this anything you’ve heard about before?”

“No,” Hwaith said, sounding upset.

Rhiow’s tail was lashing too, now. “We’re going to have to get Arhu up here,” she said. “I can’t believe this. Another – maybe not a murder, but something. And no way to tell if it’s germane to what we’re doing.” She put her nose down to the ground again, took another long breath –

— froze. A sour stink, faint, damp, acrid, teased her nose. Her mind went back to the stink she’d scented when she had had her teeth sunk into the diagnostic webbing of Hwaith’s gate, just after they’d arrived. “Do you smell that?” she said.

He put his nose down by the ground, breathed, then opened his mouth to rebreathe the scent.“Yes.”

Rhiow shook her head, sneezed. Then she sat down, licked a paw and scrubbed at her nose briefly, it itched so with the warring scents.“I wonder,” she said. “Hwaith, do earthquakes have a scent?”

He gave her an odd look.“That’s a thought that never would have occurred to me.”

“These earthquakes, anyway,” Rhiow said. “Your gate’s hyperstrings — at least, the diagnostic strings tied to the other places where the gate was trying to put down roots — they were full of this smell.”

“You’re right,” Hwaith said. “But, Rhiow, we haven’t had a quake here.” He paused. “At least, not recently. Certainly not in the last six weeks. Maybe not for much longer.”

“I wonder if we’re about to have one here.”

He looked thoughtful.“That could be. Are you suggesting we should try to prevent it?”

Rhiow sneezed again– once without trying, and then once on purpose to try to clear her nose of the warring scents. “I don’t know if we could. Even if we could, I don’t know if it would be wise. But I think we should make sure one of us is keeping an eye on this site, because if we can investigate the quake while it’s active, we might be able to run a trace back to the cause.”

Hwaith’s tail waved slowly from side to side as he thought. “It’s worth a try,” he said. “I’ll take a moment to jump back over to where Aufwi’s watching the gate…see how he’s doing, and ask him to add a tracer to the diagnostic that’s looking at this attempted root.”

“If you would,” Rhiow said.

With barely a breath of displaced air and only the softest pop, Hwaith vanished. Rhiow blinked– the departure had been unusually slick – and got up to walk out of the circle of trees, over to where the plantings parted to allow the southward vista to open up. Below, past the nearer, barren hills, the city view was beginning to glitter through the dusk — that softer, yellower, fainter light that had so struck Helen the first time she saw it. “Quite a view…” she said.

“It is,” Hwaith said from right behind her.

Rhiow jumped– not exactly off the ground, but she started violently enough that all her fur stood up in response. She came around to face Hwaith, still bristling. “How do you do that?”

His eyes were wide with shock.“What?”

“You transited in and I didn’t even hear you come back!”

“I didn’t want to disturb you!” “Well, would you please do it louder after this, because I am disturbed!”

Then Rhiow took a long breath.“Sorry,” she said. “Sorry. I’m on edge, it’s wrong of me to take it out on you. But sweet Iau up a tree, Hwaith, I’ve never heard anyone self-gate that quietly!”

He ducked himself down and twisted his head to her, and Rhiow’s annoyance dissolved instantly into amused embarrassment, for it was the kind of gesture a young Person, half-apologetic, half-playful, would have used with a playmate. “Sorry,” Hwaith said, giving her so upside-down a look from those brassy eyes that for a second or so he was practically standing on his head. Then he righted himself. “I don’t think about it often. I told you, I have the Ear sometimes – the ulterior-hearing gift. A lot of the time I can hear the air about to move, or what direction it’s going to move in, and nudge it out of moving explosively.”

“Selective matter displacement,” Rhiow said, less upset now and much more impressed.

“More like diffusion,” Hwaith said. “I spread the kinetic energy of the air’s motion around, that’s all. It’s a gimmick.”

“A useful one, I bet,” Rhiow said, and sat down to recover herself a little.

Hwaith sat beside her, looking down the hill at the glitter of the city.“Not usually,” he said. “Mostly my gate doesn’t care whether I sneak up on it or not: it misbehaves anyway.”

They sat quietly for a few moments while Rhiow finished calming herself down.“As I was saying before you sneaked up on me…it really is a fine view. You can see all the way to the ocean from here.”

“True enough,” Hwaith said, and glanced over his shoulder at the huge dark old house behind them, its windows blank and empty. “Not often anyone here to see it, though, since the murder.”

She stared at him.“Wait. Since the murder? What murder?”

“Oh, of course, you wouldn’t know.” He got up, shook himself. “Come on. It’s back here it happened.”

They walked back through the garden maze to the house.“The young tom-ehhif who lived here with his queen,” Hwaith said, “had a personal assistant who worked closely with him. Something went wrong with this other young tom-ehhif – no one’s sure what. One story was that he was jealous of the relationship between the tom and queen – though which of them he might have desired, no one’s sure. Another was that he’d become ill in his mind, and couldn’t tell friend from enemy any longer.”

They came to a halt in front of a set of floor-to-ceiling glass doors set in behind a little terrace.“Right there,” Hwaith said, “something more than twenty years ago now, the tom-ehhif who lived here was shot by his assistant: and soon after, when someone came to the house, the assistant shot himself as well. At first there were few questions about it. Afterwards the questions just wouldn’t stop. Why didn’t the queen-ehhif hear the first shot? Did she perhaps fire it herself? What was the assistant doing there that night, when he’d been told not to come? And there were a hundred other issues about it that couldn’t be settled to anyone’s satisfaction…” Hwaith waved his tail. “Finally the young tom’s father sold the house to someone else: another pair of wealthy ehhif. They own it still. But they’re not here much. I think the place troubles them.”

He let out a breath: they both sat for a few seconds in the quiet. Off in the trees down the hill, a California jay produced its rusty call from a throat that sounded like it really needed to be greased.“You must be thinking that ehhif here don’t do anything but kill each other,” Hwaith said.

“Oh, no,” Rhiow said. She looked down the length of the house. “But you say the ehhif who den here won’t stay… You think they feel the place is th’haimenh?” It was the Speech-cognate of the Ailurin word sseih’huuh, “haunted,” though the word in the Speech was more precise about the cause of the associated apparitions – more a kind of lingering, self-repeating spectral recording than any real local persistence of soul, for which there was another set of words.

“I don’t know,” Hwaith said. “I’m not clear about how ehhif think of such things. You live with them full time: maybe you know better than I would.”

Rhiow thought briefly about Iaehh, sitting some nights in the silence of the apartment that was only his now, his eyes still and sad, his head held in a way that suggested he was listening in mind to a voice he would never hear in life again.

“I’m not always sure, either,” she said, and got up. “Hwaith, let’s get back to the Silent Man’s. They’ll be thinking about getting ready to go. …And maybe,” she said, glancing over her shoulder and flirting her tail, “you’ll show me just how you diffuse that air.”

In utter silence, Hwaith vanished. Rhiow followed.

When the Silent Man’s car rolled up the broad, curving cypress-lined drive to the front door of Elwin Dagenham’s house in the hills, the pre-intervention conference in the back seat was still in full swing.

“My back fur looks terrible.”

“Sheba, it’s just fine.”

“No it’s not, it won’t lie down.”

“I could help you with that.”

Whack!“Ow!”

“I told you, I’m not interested! Come back in three months.”

“Will there be food? I’m starving.”

“I told you to eat before you left.”

“Did not.”

“Did too.”

“There’s always plenty of food. Just make sure you get it before the houiff do.”

“Houiff? Nobody said anything about houiff!”

“I must have mentioned them at least once or twice. Oh, it won’t stay down!”

“All you need is for someone to lick it a little – “

Whack!“Oww!!”

“I told you, three months!”

“There must be something in the food here. Hwaith, do they put hormones in the cat food here? Normally he’d have heard her the first ten times she told him.”

“Could just be excitement. Or memory loss. I hear you can start to incur memory loss if you have really big – “

“And don’t worry, they’re usually only little houiff. Oh, you do get the occasional houff at one of these who’s a film star. That nice big German shepherd, now, he’s a creampuff. Oh, and there’s a collie now too. Actually, there are about nine of them. All idiots, just hit them in the head if they so much as look at you and they’ll run off crying.”

“Memory loss? Who says that?”

The car rolled slowly across gravel, stopped with a crunch of tires: the driver turned around, looked into the shadowy back seat. Awful quiet back there, he said to Helen. Are they all right? Anybody get carsick?

“They’re fine,” Helen said. “Cousins, somebody use the Speech and put our host’s mind at rest.”

“Pre-event arrangements,” Rhiow said, “nothing more. Everybody, it’s wise that the Silent Man should know we’re clear on what the plan is. We go in together as his entourage, and let the PR people have their joke and take their pictures. Afterwards, we scatter. Amuse the guests, try not to damage the dogs any more than necessary for good order and discipline, have the occasional hors d’oeuvre. Occasional,” she said, eyeing Urruah. “No getting up on the tables, no matter how the guests invite you to. Arrange for food to fall on the floor when necessary. Shouldn’t be hard, as from what Sheba says, this group is likely to be so awash in alcohol pretty soon that they wouldn’t recognize an, uh, intervention if it climbed up their clothes with all its claws out singing ‘Great Queen Iau Had A Cow.’ Otherwise… just keep your ears and noses open for any sign of the kindof thing that Helen noticed in Anya Harte today. If there are any other People there who’re kindly disposed, chat with them, hear what they might have to say, don’t bring up what we are or do unless you must. If they recognize you for what you are by the look of you, downplay your role, don’tget into long explanations: you’re just here with the Silent Man. Which is true enough. When it’s time to go, he’ll let Helen know and she’ll call us all silently. Any questions?”

“About the hors d’oeuvres…”

“Yes?”

“How many is ‘occasional?’”

Whack!“Oww!!”

“Thank you, Sheba. I owe you one.”

“My pleasure.”

The Silent Man chuckled inaudibly in his throat, reached back for Sheba: she climbed up to her usual place on his shoulder. We ready? he said.

“I believe so,” Helen said.

The Silent Man got out, opened the back door for the People, then went around to Helen’s door, opened it. But she didn’t move.

Problem?

“Not at all. You go ahead,” Helen said. “I need a moment to powder my nose.”

The Silent Man smiled, closed her door carefully, and headed for the big front door of the Dagenham place with Rhiow and her People in tow.

The house was another of those structures that seemed to be having some kind of identity crisis as regarded its architecture. It had a broad curved front with columns right along the curve, but these sorted very strangely, to Rhiow’s eye, with the multiple peaked roofs behind the fa?ade. “Italian revival,” Urruah said as they strolled up to it.

“Great,” Rhiow said. “Another building that’s going to need CPR.” Through the tall windows running under the colonnade, Rhiow could see rooms brilliantly lit, and in them crowds of ehhif, the queens almost all in bright colors, the toms all in somber shades. Even through the glass, a subdued hubbub of voices could be heard.

Outside the tall carved wooden front door, the Silent Man paused, looked down at the group around his feet. Rhiow looked up at him.“Unless something comes up,” she said, “I won’t be too far from you. If you need something done, just speak to me as you’ve been doing. I’ll answer in a way that no one will hear, either your people or mine.”

He gave her a quizzical look.‘Something done?’

Like the production of an excuse to leave early, Rhiow said privately.

He smiled— the expression more than usually edged, since he was its target. Does it show that much? And he reached up and pressed the button to ring the doorbell.

The door swung open, managed by a dark tom-ehhif in black with touches of white. The Silent Man stepped in, took off the overcoat he was wearing over his own black-and-white regalia, and handed the coat and his hat to the ehhif who’d opened the door.

The tom vanished. Rhiow glanced around, glad of the excuse to hold still for a moment, as the sudden assault on the senses took a few moments to manage. Besides the echoing noise of music, voices, laughter, clinking glassware– for the huge circular front hall was floored in a checkerboard of polished marble – the scents hit any incomer in a rush of outflowing warmer air, and had to be dealt with. Food, drink, perfume, ehhif sweat and ehhif pheromone, the traces of several different varieties of houiff and various People, most of them strangers to the house, at least one a resident.

“Whew,” Urruah said from behind Rhiow. “How many do you make it?”

“A hundred or so?” Rhiow said.

“Could be a lot more,” Arhu said, stalking up beside her. “This is a fairly big place.”

“Possibly more like two hundred,” Hwaith said, coming up from behind. “There are as many cars parked in the lot up here as there were out on the street.”

“Come on,” Rhiow said, for the Silent Man had started across the floor to the biggest of the doors on the far side of the circular hall. This was a double door, the doors again of carved wood, opening inwards. Beyond them was a room at least three times the size of the front hall, again circular, the windows and glass doors on the far side all swagged with golden fabric, the panels between ornamented with paintings. Tables and chairs were set out here and there, and more tables, laden with food and drink, stood near the walls: from an adjoining room came the sound of a swing band playing.In the middle of this room, standing and talking and laughing, was a great crowd of splendidly dressed ehhif. They made up a truly astonishing vista — ehhif of all shapes and sizes, dressed of dark suits, from the casual to the very formal, or in gowns of rich silks and satins, enough jewel-flashing bracelets and necklaces to blind the casual viewer, wild hats with jutting feathers, elaborately rolled and curled hairstyles. But what Rhiow watched were the faces, the eyes, of the people who turned as the Silent Man came into the doorway, and seeing him, started to go oddly quiet.

That quiet spread, making the band in the next room sound louder by the moment. The Silent Man didn’t move out of the doorway, but simply stood still and smiled at this effect… and Rhiow was sure all the other ehhif could see the slight grimness of his look. She was equally sure that the Silent Man saw quite clearly how most of the many glances in his direction were trying to look accidental. Looks changed, scents and postures changed: the air of the room became uncomfortably charged. Nervousness, hostility, scorn, pity, annoyance, a certain nasty pleasure – without a word spoken, they were all clear enough to Rhiow, who spent at least a little of every day in Grand Central, and who over the years had been exposed to just about every ehhif emotion-scent going.

“I heard a rumor that you were coming,” said a voice from one side, “but I wasn’t sure whether to believe it. You hear so many things in this town…”

Approaching the People and the Silent Man at some speed was a small tom-ehhif in a dinner jacket and dark slacks, with a blue-and black-striped necktie of truly astonishing breadth underneath it. His black hair was slicked straight back from his forehead, as if he was trying to make it go as far back on his head as he could; his small beady eyes and long sharp nose suddenly reminded Rhiow of the grackles sitting in the tree above them on Olvera Street, their expressions caught halfway between nervousness and a kind of myopic self-importance.“Mr. Runyon, it’s such a pleasure, I’m Elwin Dagenham, we’ve met at Goldwyn once or twice, no reason for you to remember, of course. Please make yourself right at home. Marcus, quick, go back to the kitchen and get a pot of coffee for Mr. Runyon. Mr. Runyon, you hardly need introductions, you know everybody here, of course…”

The Silent Man smiled at his host, nodded as they made their way into the room. The normal array of crooks, scoundrels, cheats, jumped-up used-car salesmen now dealing in people rather than cars, money types looking for fame, famous types looking for money, and assorted others who’re just plain looking, the Silent Man said for the People to hear.

“And of course here’s the famous Miss Sheba, and this would be, what, her fan club? Oh, I think the papers are going to be interested in this, and probably the fan magazines too.” Dagenham gestured. “If you don’t mind, let’s just – yes, over here, that’s right, come on — ”

Suddenly there were more tom-ehhif gathered around the Silent Man and the People, holding up great bulky boxes with all manner of mechanics sticking out from them. Flashes started going off, and Rhiow realized with a start that these were the ancestors of the flashguns of her time: actual little bulbs of glass with something explosive inside them. The smell they produced was appalling.

Dagenham stood there looking pleased and proprietary as more ehhif from the party started gathering around, amused by what to them looked like some kind of tame-cat act.“Even the same phrasing,” Urruah said, staring around and producing his fake-ehhif smile for the amusement of the various humans who were gathering around to watch. “How many people do you think are paying Giorgio off for celebrity tips every day?”

“Probably as many as possible,” Hwaith said. “A maitre d’ doesn’t make all that much, even after the tips.”

Arhu and Siffha’h were standing together, looking desperately alike, wide-eyed and cute, an effect that Rhiow had seen even ehhif Queens find difficult to resist. Some of the photographers, apparently having far less developed powers of resistance, went down on their knees to get pictures of the two. “Try pulling the corners of your mouths back further,” Urruah said. “They like that.”

“Please,” Siffha’h said, dry. “My eyeballs are about to jump out of my head as it is. I’m saving my mouth for the food. And I know I smell chicken liver pate here somewhere.”

“Across the room, to the left, that second table,” Urruah said without turning a whisker, “between the Swedish meatballs and the lox. And, sweet Queen Iau, is that actually Beluga?..”

Rhiow rolled her eyes as the photographers finished their first round of photos, and Urruah proceeded across the room as if he owned it, straight through the splendid crowd who now turned their attention away from the Silent Man, and laughed to see Urruah march over to the dark ehhif in charge handing out plates for the buffet. He sat down in front of this gentleman, tucked his tail around his toes, and simply gazed longingly upward and purred.

An immediate furious yapping came from the next room over, the one containing the band. A small houff, one of the fluffy shrill-voiced kind, came charging out of the ballroom with its silky golden fur all a-bristle. Apparently it had seen Urruah crossing the room, and couldn’t bear the sight of a Person on what it had for the moment come to consider its own territory.

Play nice, now! Rhiow said to Urruah.

Urruah didn’t even bother turning his head. Speechless with fury, or at least reduced to incomprehensibility by it, the little houff went straight for Urruah – and halfway to him, tripped and sprawled right onto its already sufficiently-flattened nose.

Houiff were of course as unable to see a sidled Person as ehhif were. Hwaith, who had slipped out of sight under a table to go invisible, and afterwards had calmly strolled over and crouched down for the houff to stumble over, now got up as the enraged houff did. It turned toward Urruah, yelping with surprise and frustration, ready to jump at him again. Urruah merely turned to stare down his nose at it…and the poor houff had reason to yelp again, as Hwaith administered it a sharp whack on the nose with the claws just out enough to make an impression.

Apparently horrified by the concept of a Person who could hit you before you even got close to it, the houff turned and ran back into the ballroom, still yelping: a kindly-looking bald-headed man in a dinner jacket picked it up and took it away, talking to it soothingly. In the main room, the ehhif howled with laughter at Urruah’s deadpan reaction, and started plying him with food.

“Don’t forget to save me my percentage,” Hwaith said over his shoulder to Urruah.

“Cousin, caching’s for canids, you know that.” Urruah looked smug. “Just get over here in time not to miss the good stuff.” He paused to lick his chops after one tidbit. “Pretty good sour cream on these blinis…”

Rhiow watched with amusement as Hwaith strolled back her way.“A little harsh with the poor creature, weren’t you?”

“It’s what my dam always said: a claw goes further into the ear than a thousand explanations.” Hwaith wandered back toward a settee over at the side of the room. “Why waste time saying ‘nice doggie’ fifty or a hundred times? Houiff talk to each other, if not to us. Word’ll get around in a hurry….”

After a little while she started to wonder if he was right, for they were bothered by no more houiff. It was the ehhif who were doing the bothering now: Rhiow was picked up, petted, fed, fussed over, fed some more, and even offered alcohol. In the midst of all the ruckus, she was relieved to catch a glimpse of the Silent Man again: she’d lost track of him briefly. Just inside the ballroom next door was a fireplace, and a fire, against the back of the room, between tall windows looking out on a terrace. There the Silent Man had esconced himself at a table that sat a comfortable distance from the fire, and had made himself at home with a pot of coffee that a servant had brought him, while Sheba lay across his lap and accepted the occasional tidbit from a plate of hors d’oeuvres they’d been brought. Around the table sat a few other tom-ehhif, most of them older men. The Silent Man seemed to be enjoying all their company, but with one of them in particular he seemed to be doing a lot of pad-scribbling: a thin little man, sharp-faced, with close-set eyes – another bird-like face, but more closely resembling a hawk than any grackle. The voice was hawkish too, harsh and rasping, and would have been unpleasant if notfor the humor in it. ’Ruah, Rhiow said, take a break from stuffing your gut, will you?

“Did it before you thought about it,” he said from behind her. “Rhi, they’ve got oysters on the half-shell on that third table, and they’re going fast. Stop exercising self-denial and get in there.”

Rhiow’s mouth started watering. “Truly I’m going to get you for that one of these days,” she said. “Meanwhile, you seem to know most of these people. Any idea who that one is? The ehhif with the nose. He’s the only one here who isn’t looking at the Silent Man like he’s some kind of plague victim.”

Urruah sat down beside her, looking strangely pleased as he started to wash his face.“The look of him I don’t know,” he said, “but anyone studying this land in this time would have heard his voice. That’s Hhwalher Hhwinhel’lh. A newspaperman once, as the Silent Man was. But then he did something unusual: he invented the gossip column. Now he’s beyond famous – his column is in two thousand papers across the country, and he does a rah’hio show every night….fifty-five million listeners. In this time, he’s a superstar. And he and the Silent Man have been great friends for some while…which is interesting, since Sheba tells me that once they were great enemies.” He put his whiskers forward. “But since the Silent Man got sick, Hhwalher’s had a change of heart. Makes you think there’s some hope for ehhif after all.”

“So he’s safe there for the time being…”

“Yes. I’ll keep an eye on him for a while, if you like. We’ll all take turns at it. Meanwhile, you go make the oysters feel unsafe for a few minutes! The team’s doing what it’s here for. Arhu and Sif are out looking and listening, and taking Hwaith’s advice when it’s needed. Go on, stop micromanaging…”

Rhiow put her whiskers forward and, to please him, did as she was told. She was on her fourth oyster, obligingly fed to her by a tall dark tom-ehhif in a tuxedo, when she suddenly heard that laugh like glass going tinkle, tinkle, tinkle out of a tipped-over garbage can. Oh no, Rhiow thought, but there was nowhere to escape to: Anya Harte was heading straight for her. The queen had on another of her flouncy little dresses, in a deeper blue this time– more a peacock’s feather color – all scattered with a brittle glitter of rhinestones; and she was collared in a choker of what might or might not have been diamonds, but in any case made her look to Rhiow like a Park Avenue Peke. The little high heels came tap-tap-tapping off the ballroom floor, where she’d apparently been dancing with some tom. “And look there,” Anya cried to several of the group of toms who’d followed her out of the ballroom, “there’s one of the darling kitties! Oh, aren’t they all so adorable? And that’s the prettiest one, absolutely dead black, unlucky for most people of course, but not for me — !”

Rhiow threw a horrified glance at Urruah, who was sitting exactly a foot to the right of where he had been– safely out of tripping range, and sidled. It’s a good thing, Rhiow said silently as Miss Harte snatched her up, that I’m not so paranoid that I’d ever suspect you of setting this up.

“What a sweet face he has! Isn’t he lovely? And such big golden eyes! And – oh, my, his breath smells so fishy! Is it a fishy wishy kitty then?”

Rhiow closed her eyes in what she hoped would be mistaken for a lazy friendly expression.“Woman, you reek!” she said softly. “It’d make anyone’s eyes water.” The overpowering scent was mostly that of roses, but other rather mismatched scents seemed to have been haphazardly added to this basis — as if the wearer had mixed the bottle-remnants of several expensive perfumes together, assuming that the result would be all right just because they’d all been expensive. “Oh, Queen Iau,” Rhiow said, “please let her just put me down before I have to shred her tatty dress. Oh, not upside down!”

“But they’re dear Mr. Runyon’s friends, so we have to be nice to them,” Miss Harte said, in one too-expert move inverting Rhiow and holding her cradled on her back in her arms, exactly as Hhuha had used to do. But Hhuha hadn’t squeezed her as if she was a rag doll, and had spent her time holding Rhiow talking to her; whereas Miss Harte was talking over Rhiow’s head at the crowd of toms who were using the excuse of admiring Rhiow to admire the parts of Miss Harte she was being squeezed against. Rhiow opened her eyes again – had to, they felt like they were popping — and looked up into that pretty face, all smiles, but not a smile-line in sight, and all wide blue eyes, though those eyes were only looking into the toms’ eyes for the purpose of seeing her own reflection there. “They’re the only friends he has now, I suppose, though everybody does their best to help himalong. It’s so nice that he has some company at home, it must be so hard for him to be alone so much after that dreadful woman ditched him, though I suppose everybody was expecting it, we all know what those types are like! But you wouldn’t believe the terrible kind of people he’s been keeping company with, I ran across him at lunch at Musso and Frank’s today, and the whole back room was simply aghast, because…what?”

Miss Harte trailed off, slowed down by what Rhiow thought was the only thing that could have done it, short of Iau Herself appearing in Her glory and starting in on the buffet: the toms’ faces turning away. All around them, another stillness like the one the Silent Man’s entry had produced now fell, but this one much differed in quality, as about fifty tom-ehhifs’ breaths went in and didn’t come out.

Helen Walks Softly stood in the middle of that open double door from the front hallway, wearing more than any other woman in the place…and somehow less. Her dress was sleeveless, off-the-shoulder, nipped in at the waist, full-length, and a shade darker than the wine she’d been drinking at lunch. The fabric seemed unornamented, except for a subtle shimmer toward darker shades when it swung away from the light. But a half-inch or so above where the cleavage became truly interesting, the fabric simply seemed to start fading away like fog. By the time it reached Helen’s collarbones, it was completely gone. The effect seemed calculated to distract even the most singleminded viewer from the single blood-red cabochon garnet hanging by a chain in the hollow of Helen’s throat… and to instead leave one wondering whether the boundary between fabric “being there” and “not being there” might possibly shift without warning, and in which direction.

Possibly the focus of even more attention, though, was Helen’s hair. In a time when all the other queen-ehhif seemed to be wearing it put up or fairly short, in rolls or curls, and some in structures that looked more like architecture than hair, Helen had simply pinned the sides of her long hair back and let the rest flow untrammeled in raven waves down her back. Numerous of the tom-ehhif watching her were doing so with expressions suggesting that they only saw queens with their hair down so in far more private circumstances. Some of them had plainly begun wondering how such circumstances, involving Helen, might be organized.

Miss Harte simply dropped Rhiow. Rhiow was ready for this, indeed grateful for it, and landed on her feet in a state of wicked amusement as the toms, trying not to look like they were hurrying too much, went around Rhiow on either side and headed for Helen. Elwin Dagenham, meanwhile, materialized from out of the middle of the crowd and went hurriedly to greet her. Helen strolled over to him, put out a gracious hand and began complimenting him on the beauty of his house. Toms from elsewhere in the room started to gather around the first group, beauty rather obviously on their minds as well.

“Helen,” Urruah said, having come unsidled again and strolling back in and around her, “is that a little of your head-fur sticking up back there…?”

Whack!“Oww!”

“So perverse,” Siffha’h said, wandering back past Urruah and off through the center of the room, where approximately three-quarters of the guests had abruptly lost interest in the People, the buffet and the bar, the males apparently out of admiration and many of the females out of sheer pique.

“I was kidding!”

“Yeah, sure,” Arhu said, going after his siste, who was heading through a door opposite to the ballroom entrance. “If he’s not careful, somebody’s going to get born an ehhif in his next life, and is it ever going to be messy!”

“Never mind them, Helen,” Urruah said, after shaking his ears back into kilter again: Siffha’h’s southpaw clout was one of Arhu’s chief complaints about life. “Which designer did you trade a wizardry to for that?”

Helen smiled as a glass of wine was put into her hands by one of the crowd of toms she’d suddenly acquired. It’s an Elie Saab from a few years ago, my time, she said silently as she toasted her admirer and had a sip, but otherwise nothing out of the ordinary.

Pr?t-a-porter?

Oh, come on,‘Ruah, like I can afford couture on my salary! But I did have a word with the material.

“The right one, I’d say,” Rhiow said: the toms were third-day-of-heat thick around Helen. If there are any secrets worth hearing in this place, I suspect she’ll be the one who gets told them…She glanced around. “Now where’s Miss Harte gone?”

“Wouldn’t think you cared, fishy-breath ‘boy,’” Urruah said, putting his whiskers forward. “Or would have thought you would have been ready with some suggestions.”

“Please,” Rhiow said. “The Queen would have words with me if I’d done what I was thinking of doing.” She glanced around. “It’s too much to hope for that she’d have left. No, there she is, back with the Silent Man and his friends again.”

“Or trying to be,” Urruah said, for no one at the table of senior toms was giving Miss Harte so much as a glance, though she hung over them and chatted about what she saw on the Silent Man’s writing pad and otherwise tried to look as if she was welcome with them. “Never mind her: she’s just salving her wounded ego by ‘playing’ with the old toms instead of the young ones. They’ll soon see her off if they get tired of her eavesdropping.” He stood up, glanced over his shoulder at Helen, who had drifted off toward the buffet with her sudden entourage, and looked to be as much indanger of being fed by hand as Rhiow and the other People had been. “She’s got their tails under her paw; let’s leave her to get on with business. I’ll go see what the youngsters are up to.”

“You do that,” Rhiow said, and stood there watching Urruah, for a wonder, actually walk away from food. Then she flicked an ear at her own sarcasm, possibly something left over from the annoyance of being half-squashed against Anya Harte’s peculiar-smelling chest.

Enough, Rhiow said to herself: that doesn’t have to happen again. If she tries it, I’ll inflict on her a wardrobe malfunction the likes of which these people have never seen. For the moment, I’ll have a wander.

The wander went on for quite a while. Rhiow went out through the back doors of the ballroom, and found that the house seemed to have three wings reaching out from behind the curved fa?ade, and the two outer ones had upstairs levels as well. Then behind it all was a terrace and a pool, and past that a smaller structure, a poolhouse, from which Rhiow could hear the voices of People carrying across the water. One of them was the queen that Sheba had called “Maiwi”; Rhiow could actually smell her all the way from the other end of the pool. No, she thought, I’m not going down there. She eyed the plantings up behind the pool, which went for a little way up the hillside before the native manzanita scrub asserted itself. The two stuccoed outer wings of the house reached right to the hillside, each vanishing under the shade of peppertrees down at that end.

From the darkness, a shadow materialized beside her.“Not going down to visit with our social betters?” Hwaith said.

Rhiow snorted.“Please! I prefer it here with the peasantry. Hwaith, what in Her name’s the matter with Maiwi? Doesn’t she groom? How does she bear herself?”

He waved his tail in an“I don’t know” gesture. “Sheba once told me she thought she might be sick somehow,” Hwaith said. “But what way, I’m not sure. Maybe physically. Maybe in the mind. I don’t understand for myself how someone can get so lazy they won’t walk to their own foodbowl, or can’t be bothered to get up to make siss somewhere away from themselves….”

Rhiow breathed out.“Ah well,” she said, “we’ve got enough problems in our own foodbowls at the moment: can’t solve all the world’s troubles in the flick of a tail.” She glanced around. “Where did the youngsters go? Did you see?”

“They’re inside someplace. But this place has a lot of inside…” He looked over his shoulder. “I’ll go look for them, if you like.”

“No hurry,” Rhiow said. “If Arhu’s using the Eye on something, it’s best not to disturb him. He’ll let me know, or Sif will, if they find anything germane.”

“All right,” Hwaith said, and headed off toward the plantings up at the far end of the pool.

Rhiow watched him go, then padded over to the side of the terrace. In the shadows over there, along with some lounge chairs and planting boxes, there was a birdbath, not nearly high enough to protect any unfortunate bird from a Person. But at this time of night, it wasn’t birds she was interested in: it was water. There had been plenty of things for the ehhif at the buffet to drink, but not much for People: and Rhiow knew better than to drink pool water. Besides the chemicals, she thought, Iau only knows what the ehhif have been doing in there…

She tensed, leapt, balanced on the rim of the birdbath. There was indeed water in it, and there in the shadows she crouched carefully and drank. I could drink this whole thing, Rhiow thought; I had no idea I was this thirsty. Still, better to leave some for somebody else—

“ – not sure I want to be involved,” said an ehhif-queen’s soft voice from over by the ballroom doors. “You know how some people are if they get word that anyone’s trying to upset the status quo.”

“But this wouldn’t be like that,” said another voice, a tom’s. “Dolores, it’s just not fair to you. You see how you keep getting passed over just because you wouldn’t – “

“It’s not that, Ray. It’s the methods. Just because they’re being unfair to me doesn’t mean it’s right for me to be unfair to them.”

There was something about the pain in the queen-ehhif’s voice that brought Rhiow’s head up, held her where she was. The woman was short, slight, wearing a long pale gown; her hair was dark and short, her face in shadow and hard to make out in this light. The man was tall, slim, wearing a tuxedo as many of the ehhif-toms were this evening; his hair and brows were dark, but there was little else that even a Person’s eyes could make out with bright light behind him and his face turned away toward the pool and the hillside. “Dolores,” he said. “This ‘fair’ and ‘unfair’ stuff, you’ve got to let it go. It’s doing you no good. What point is being the only principled actress at the studio when you’re also the only one whose contract isn’t going to get picked up?”

The queen-ehhif was sniffling. The tom took her by both arms, holding her that way even when she pulled a little to be let go.“All I’m asking is that you give it a try. It’s not like you’re going to be sticking pins in dolls! It’s nothing so stupid or primitive. It’s a straightforward way to get the forces that actually run the Universe, the Higher Forces, to pay attention to you and get Them to do what you want Them to do, for a change, instead of just shooting off all Their energy randomly. It’s a purposeful direction of a natural power, like electricity. Some people have a talent for it and don’t even know it, never know why they have good luck and the people around them have it bad. But it can betaught, it can be learned, and when it’s learned and used, it works. Did you see what happened to Millie? Her manager ran off to Rio with her last six pictures’ wages, her agent dumped her, Charles left her and took up with her hairdresser, for Pete’s sake! – it was about as bad for her as it could get. Then she went to one of our group’s little sessions and went through the reconstruction routine. She wasn’t any more certain about it at first than you are, but she gave it her all. And two days later, RKO picked up her contract at three times what her weekly had been at Loew’s. It’s worth it, Dolores! All the Universe wants back from you, all the Forces want, is commitment. Commit yourself and you can have it all. The Strong Ones and the Great Old One they work for are willing to be on your side, but you have to stand up and commit to being strong yourself, first. Be Their friend, and They’ll be yours.”

The sniffling had stopped. Rhiow didn’t move a muscle, unwilling to misstep and make some sound that might break whatever was happening here: for in the silence of the terrace and the back of her mind, she could hear something she had heard only very occasionally before – the Whisperer, silent, breathing, listening.

“I don’t know,” the queen-ehhif said, after a long pause. But something in her voice told Rhiow she did know, she was just waiting for some one thing to push her over the edge into the choice. “What if it doesn’t – “

“It will,” the tom said. “It will. I promise. You’ve had so much that’s gone wrong. This is where it starts to go right.” He turned her face up to his gently with one hand, and lowered his head to hers.

Silence.

Many of Rhiow’s breaths later, many of the Whisperer’s, the young queen put her arms around the tom. “All right,” she said, and it was strange how close to tears she sounded again. “For you, all right. How soon?”

“Not right this minute, first thing,” the tom said. “Come on, let me get you a glass of something.”

They broke the clinch, though the tom kept one arm around the queen’s waist. “No, I have to know, I’m going to have to change some appointments – “

They walked toward the ballroom doors.“What’s today?” the tom-ehhif said.

“The sixteenth.”

Rhiow jumped down as soon as they passed and their backs were turned to her.“Tomorrow evening.”

“Where should I meet you?”

Hold still, hold still! Rhiow thought, but it was too late, they were halfway into the house already. Into the ballroom.“We meet here first and then we…”

Rhiow ran toward the doors…and the swing band struck up, an impenetrable wall of sound, especially the piercing solo clarinet that made it impossible to hear anything further. She stood a moment outside the door, watching them vanish into the largish group of ehhif who were making their way onto the dance floor.

All right, she said to the Whisperer as she sat down just outside the door, frustrated, and scrubbed one ringing ear, then the other. That was worth hearing. And now we have someone to listen to a little more closely this evening.

She sidled and headed through the ballroom, looking closely at the ehhif there: but Dolores and Ray hadn’t stayed in the room. Rhiow trotted through into the buffet, and found Urruah standing off to one side, looking at a crowd which had already grown significantly larger just in the relatively short time since they’d come. What had not changed was the broken-glass tinkle of one particular voice rising again and again over the rumble of other conversation and laughter. The jewels around Anya Harte’s throat flashed, her eyes glittered, her laughter was increasingly frequent; and the edginess and the brittleness of it grew every time her eyes came to rest on Helen Walks Softly, and the small, intent, fascinated group that had gathered around the dark woman in the wine-dark dress.

“It’s the ultimate fascination, isn’t it,” Urruah said.

“What?”

He was watching the tom-ehhifs with the amusement of someone who knows a secret.“Her. She’s got something unique, and they can’t quite identify it. That tang of something foreign and exotic…”

“In the most foreign way she could be,” Rhiow said, waving her tail slowly in agreement. “What’s another country, compared to another time?”

“What’s sad about this, though,” Urruah said, “is that though they’re pretending to be fascinated by her, it’s not what Helen is that’s attracting them: it’s what she represents. A prize, a way to get one up on the other ehhif. In fact, almost none of these people are enjoying themselves. Maybe the Silent Man and his friends. But the rest of this isn’t about enjoyment, or seeing people you like. It’s just one big game of hauissh. Everybody jockeying for position, for advantage, while trying not to be seen to be doing that. Talk to the right person, and make sure everybody sees you talking to them…or not talking to them. Or else let everyone see how obviously you’re not talking to the people who don’t have anything to offer you. Hide what won’t get you something, reveal what will.” His tail jerked to one side, a gesture of distaste.

Rhiow gave him an odd look.“That caviar sour your stomach?”

“No,” Urruah said, and shook himself. “Something else. I was about to come looking for you.”

“Oh? Why? What is it?”

“I’m not sure,” Urruah said.

Rhiow flicked an ear in mild surprise. Except in the professional arena, where precision was an absolute requirement, Urruah was rarely afraid to theorize in the absence of facts.“Why? What have you got?”

“I don’t want to prejudice your first impression,” he said. “Just come see.”

They made their way down a hallway, turned a corner and passed down between some closed doors: turned again and found two ehhif kissing passionately in a love-seat set into an embrasure in the wall on one side. Quietly they all passed by on the far side of the hall, Urruah flicking an amused glance at the very preoccupied and already partially disrobed ehhif as they went.“A lot of that going on down some of these back hallways,” he said. “You’d think they wanted to be found.”

“In this crowd,” Rhiow said, “why would this surprise you? Assuming your theory of movie-ehhif behavior is right, which I’m assuming it is.” She looked down the hallway, which stretched for quite a way in front of them, the right-hand of the two wings that reached toward the hillside.

They passed a broad stairway on the left that led up to the second floor, and then more doors. At the very end of the hallway, straight ahead of them, was a door, partly open. They slipped in through it. The room was a library, a large and handsome one done in dark wood paneling, with thin brass rails keeping the books in their shelves. Thick dark-brown carpeting kept noise to a minimum: during the day, the russet-curtained windows would have views of the pool and terrace on one side, the driveway on the other. Now, though, the curtains were drawn.

At the end of the room was a large, luxurious-looking leather sofa, the kind of thing that made your claws itch just to look at it; above it hung a framed landscape, a watercolor of some distant misty lake set about with trees, the dusk coming on. Sitting in front of the sofa, staring into the middle of the room, was Arhu. Sitting by him, her eyes closed, was Siff’hah.

Rhiow just stood there for a moment, keeping quiet, as there was no mistaking the feeling of wizardly power building in the room. But suddenly it evaporated, as quickly and anticlimactically as the air going out of a balloon that an ehhif had let go of. Arhu opened his eyes and swore.

The Ailurin word was so vile that Rhiow was tempted to go straight over and clout him one, except that there might have actually been a good reason for the anger.“What?” she said.

He glared at her, then at Urruah.“Nothing,” he said. “I can’t see a thing.”

Urruah looked over at Rhiow.“It should be easier to feel now that he’s let that go,” he said to Rhiow. “Rhi, can you feel it? It’s as if there had been a gate here once. But not now. And no way to tell when.”

Rhiow sat down on the carpet, and half-closed her eyes to see better. All around her, the hyperstrings that ran through the structure of everything became clearer to her view– an insubstantial weft and weave of light, like interwoven harp strings, piercing through the room from ceiling to floor and crisscrossing it from windows to walls. Normally, except for local gravitational disturbances or other strictly natural perturbations, hyperstrings ran straight. But here the straightness of many of the strings was interrupted by slight curves, places where the strings’ supracolors shifted unreasonably. As if local space remembers how a gate was here once…

Hwaith? she said silently.

Yes?

I need you to have a look at something.

In absolute silence, Hwaith appeared. Urruah and Arhu and Siffha’h all started.

Rhiow flicked an ear.“He does that,” she said. “Hwaith, take a look at the strings in here.”

He got that unfocused look, then glanced over at Rhiow, confused.“A characteristic perturbation,” he said. “But here?”

“is there the slightest possibility that your gate’s ever made its way over this far in its travels?”

“In my time?” Hwaith said. “Never. That big a jump, I’d have noticed. In my predecessor’s time? I don’t think so – I’m sure he’d have mentioned. Before that? No idea. I’d have to check the gate’s logs.”

“Something you should do when we’re done here,” Rhiow said. She wandered around the room, looking to see where the strings were showing the most alteration. “It’s mostly over by this wall, isn’t it?” she said.

“Seems so to me,” Hwaith said.

“Arhu?”

“I had a look at the wall, too,” Arhu said. “I can’t see a thing.”

“Not even with me boosting him,” Siffha’h said.

“I’m no expert in the Eye,” Urruah said. “But I know someone who is…and she tells me that, with sufficient power and intent, it can be blocked.”

“Yes it can,” Rhiow said. “And she has some other concerns, too. At least one person here tonight is friendly with the ‘friend’ of the Lady in Black. That person, and I think some more such friendly types, are going to be meeting here, for a while at least, tomorrow night. We need to be ready for them, and ready to find out what they have to do with this.”

They all stared at her.“What did she tell you?” Urruah said.

The scream of utter terror from the upstairs level could be heard right through the ceiling.“Dear Queen around us!” Urruah said, and tore out through the open door.

Everyone was sidled before they’d gone more than a few yards down the hall. The crowd of ehhif plunging up those stairs in the next few moments were quite unaware of the invisible shapes running up the stairs with them, in Urruah’s case even jumping up onto the banister to be able to run unhindered by all the ehhif legs. At the top of the stairs they turned right, for the sound had come from further down, and ran on to where a door on the left-hand side of the hall stood open, and a tall blonde queen-ehhif in silks and diamonds was comforting another one who huddled against her and shuddered and wept.

It was a bathroom, ornate with golden faucets in the sink and bathtub, brocaded curtains hanging down, reeking with expensive ehhif fragrances. The wide, mirrored medicine cabinet over the sink stood open: there were bottles open on the counter, spilled-out pills scattered across it and onto the floor. And on the floor among them, a pale-gowned body with short dark hair lay sprawled on the thick soft rug, loose-limbed and inert as a puppet with its strings cut.

Like the ehhif all around them, the People stared. Then Rhiow looked over her shoulder at Hwaith.

“You were saying,” she said to him, “that the ehhif here do something besides kill each other? I’m beginning to wonder.”

The Big Meow: Chapter Seven

Rhiow slipped in past the ehhif and went to more closely examine the queen lying there on the floor. As soon as she got within touching distance of the queen, though, she realized that the situation was both less grim than she’d initially thought, and more complicated. The she-ehhif’s scent had none of the chill about it that to a Person would speak of death within seconds, while the body was still warm. Rhiow put her face down by the queen’s pale one, felt the slightest stirring of breath. But not normal breathing at all. And no way to tell whether it’s going to last much longer. She glanced up at the ehhif crowding the doorway, none of them coming close as yet. But how long will it take an ahhm’vhuwlanss to get here? And bringing what kind of care? In a city of this time, ehhif medicine wasn’t advanced all that far. Possibly not far enough to do this poor queen any good before her body failed —

All right… Rhiow thought. “’Ruah,” she said as he came in behind her, “she’s not dead yet, though I can see why this other poor queen started screaming: she looks the part. I’ve got to try to put her right. Or at least find out what’s happened here, if I can’t fix what’s wrong. Make sureno one kicks me or anything, will you?”

“No problem, I’ve got a forcefield ready….”

Rhiow hurriedly slipped behind the toilet, well away from any ehhif who might come to help the one on the floor. There she crouched down and closed her eyes. I hate having to do this at such short notice, but not much choice— Any gate tech working in the train stations in New York routinely found herself having to deal with sick or injured ehhif: hurt ones got down onto the tracks sometimes after a mugging or a chase, or else they tried to hide there in the dark for some reason and came to grief afterwards, usually by making contact with a third rail… or a train at speed. At least there’s no big external damage with this one, Rhiow thought, settling into the dark place in the back of her mind where she kept pre-assembled spells that worked on ehhif in a strictly physical mode. But as for what else might begoing on –

One of the spells lying dormant in her mind was a diagnostic. Silently Rhiow wove together its words in the Speech, then knotted the spell into action with the Wizard’s Knot. In that interior darkness, the queen-ehhif’s body began to describe itself in networks and areas of light, a shifting play of interwoven energies. Bloodflow traced itself outward from the heart in a slowly throbbing network; a faint stuttering lightning of neural fire ran up and down the nerves. This pattern in particular looked very uneven to Rhiow, and it was one she’d seen before in some of the unfortunates who wound up collapsed on the tracks down in Grand Central. Drugs, she thought. And there were all those pill bottles scattered around by the sink. But at the same time – what pill works so fast? It makes no sense –

In the spell’s darkness, Rhiow got up and paced over to more closely examine the simulacrum of the queen’s bodily processes. The breathing was steady enough for the moment, but still very slow: too slow for Rhiow’s liking. Urruah, she said, do me a favor. Go smell her breath.

Rhiow looked more closely at the bloodflow, then reached into the lightweave of the diagnostic and hooked a claw into one of the Speech-words which would shift the view so that it focused on the ehhif’s body chemistry, pointing up anything that didn’t belong there. Immediately, as she concentrated on the big vessels around the heart, where the volume was best for diagnosis, she saw the subtle glittery light of a myriad tiny shapes floating in the blood: not only the expected lines and tangles of alcohol molecules, but a lot of something else, a shorter molecule, with a double branch at one end and hydroxyl radicals hanging off it. Outside the darkness, That’s strange! Urruah said.

What?

Her breath. It’s a fruit smell, I’d say. Pears. But I didn’t see anything with pears in it downstairs…

Since when would you be interested in the fruit salad? Arhu said from behind him.

Oh, come on, I don’t want to eat it but I’d have noticed –

Our resident foodie has you there, Rhiow said. Where’s Helen?

Coming, said Helen’s voice in her head, sounding unusually dark and grim. Did you say you smelled pears on her breath?

He did. Helen, what is this? Her respiration’s very depressed: I’ve got to do something before it stops. But what kind of stuff acts this fast? It’s too early for what your kind call date rape drugs, and anyway those don’t act this way —

If Urruah’s smelling pears, then it’s chloral hydrate, Helen said silently. Maybe something else as well, though I’m not sure. It doesn’t matter: chloral by itself can act really fast if it’s concentrated enough. It was a favorite ingredient in what they used to call a Mickey Finn— knockout drops was another name for it. And she’d been drinking, too: that’d speed things up considerably. What are her eyes doing?

Wait a moment, Urruah said. Rhiowcould feel him walk carefully up to the queen-ehhif’s face, put a cautious pad against one eye and pull on it a little, just enough so that the eyelid moved. The pupils – they’ve gone very tiny. Don’t think I’ve seen an ehhif with such tiny pupils, ever –

Pinpoints, Helen said. That’s it: it’s either chloral or an opiate. But no opiate they’ve got right now works so fast – at least none you’d take by mouth.

All right, Rhiow said, and thought hard for a moment, looking again at the ehhif’s breathing. It was slowing. I’d just pull all those drug molecules out of there if I had more time to make sure I wasn’t compromising her blood plasma, but I don’t have that kind of time. Makes more sense to just break the molecules so they’ll stop functioning. Might as well break the alcohol as well – it’s only making things worse. Her liver’ll detox the fragments soon enough —

Abruptly the diagnostic image moved, like a puppet of light that had had its strings suddenly tugged upward: the body was being lifted off the floor. Rhiow ignored this for a moment, being more occupied with finding the Speech-words she needed to ask the chloral hydrate and alcohol molecules to kindly break themselves into pieces. What’s happening out there?

Some more ehhif are in here, Urruah said. This one’s a tom. He’s picked her up a little. Another one’s just given him a bottle, they’re waving it under her nose –

Oh, not really, Helen said, and her interior grimness lightened a little. Smelling salts! What a time this is. Be there in a moment–

Rhiow strung together in her mind the words that she needed, knotted the spell closed, turned it loose. Simple chemical compounds like these, when spoken to politely, rarely argued the point of dissolution with a wizard: unless they were very complex, they tended not to consider participation in a compound to be their major job in life. The joined hydrogen and oxygen atoms in the alcohol and the chloral hydrate obligingly came undone along the lines that Rhiow was suggesting, leaving water behind and not much else but some free hydroxyl radicals that the liver would deal with in due course. Rhiow shifted her view of the ehhif’s physical structures once more to concentrate on the breathing and neural structures. The nerves are a little better already. But the breathing – better have a word with the brain —

The body she was working on changed position again. Okay, I’m here, Helen said. Yes indeed, smelling salts, I can’t believe it… I’ve taken over the job of waving it under her nose from her friend. I’m assuming that’s who this is, Rhiow? You said this lady was talking to a gentleman earlier?

More than talking, Rhiow said. All right…let’s see how she does now. I had a word with the receptor sites in her brain that were already blocked up with latched-on chloral molecules. She looked down the length of the diagnostic: the heart was already beating a little better. Some improvement there –

She’s moving a little, Rhi, Urruah said. Not conscious yet, but she will be in a bit.

Rhiow let out a long breath and came out of the darkness, blinking a little. Her breath was coming hard, her heart pounding, the inevitable result of doing a moderately complex wizardry on such short notice and without enough prep time. She gulped, licked her nose a little, and stayed where she was for the moment, peering out from under the toilet at the strange tableau which the bathroom had become. The door was still crammed full of ehhif staring in, open-eyed, open-mouthed, whispering, and not one of them doing anything useful. Inside, the tom-ehhif who’d been talking to the queen down in the garden was partially supporting her, looking distressed: across from him, Helen was patting the queen’s face. “Dolores! Dolores! Come on, wake up, that’s right… come on, Dolores, you had a little faint, that’s all…”

Rhiow blinked at that. From behind the ehhif, Hwaith came skirting carefully around them, sidled, and crouched down by Rhiow.“Are you all right?”

She licked her nose again.“I’m fine. Or I will be in a few minutes. You know how it is, though: you do a wizardry you weren’t anticipating, and without a lot of prep – “

“It takes it out of you,” he said.

Rhiow was surprised to see those big brassy eyes were looking at her with such concern. She waved her tail a little, intent on reassuring him.“Hwaith, believe me, I’ve had worse! I’ll be all right.”

In the middle of the floor, Dolores stirred, moaned a little. After a second a hand came up to feebly try to push the bottle away: an understandable reaction, as the stuff in the bottle stank vilely enough to make Queen Iau lying on the hearth of Heaven sneeze. Then Dolores’s eyes opened: she looked hazily around her.

One by one, Urruah and Arhu and Siffha’h came around to join Rhiow and Hwaith, all of them huddling down well out of the way. The room had started to become increasingly full of ehhif, which was amusing in that this was only happening now that the trouble seemed to be resolving itself. Helen, glancing unnoticed at the four in the corner, straightened up a little. “She’s all right,” she said to the people who were starting to crowd into the room. “It was so hot downstairs, it’s no surprise someone might feel a little faint – “

The misdirection was typically wizardly: not a lie as such, but designed to suggest to the hearers that something besides the obvious was going on. Rhiow, however, thought with regret that the suggestion wasn’t likely to affect this group of listeners much. Their expressions generally indicated that they were far more interested in believing the worst than in giving anyone the benefit of the doubt.

“Listen,” Siffha’h said, twitching an ear. Distantly, Rhiow heard sirens approaching.

“Finally,” Urruah said. “Took them long enough!”

“’Ruah, this isn’t Manhattan,” Rhiow said, “and it’s not our time, either. And consider this city’s size. Either way, she’ll be all right: we were here, lucky for her. Or maybe it was more than luck: it’s not as if there aren’t Powers that work for ehhif as well as against them.” Her eyes narrowed a little as she glanced up at the pills scattered over the counter by the sink. “Except for us, this would most likely have been a murder scene now. Or, as the ehhif would have thought, a suicide. Now all we need to know is how she was drugged so quickly, and why, and who did it.”

“But who would drug her? And why?” Hwaith said.

“I had no time to tell any of you,” Rhiow said. “Just before we went down to the room where the strings were strange, I heard this ehhif having a very interesting conversation with her friend there.” She eyed the ehhif called Ray. “Now I find myself wondering – did someone else hear some of that conversation, and not like what they heard? Did somebody maybe not want this poor queen to go to the meeting the tom-ehhif was proposing she attend?”

Rhiow looked over at Arhu.“This would normally be your department,” she said.

“Normally,” he said, sounding very annoyed. “But remember about downstairs – “

“I know. Try again,” Rhiow said. “And hurry, before too many more ehhif come in here and start making it harder for you to See.”

Arhu sat up straight, curled his tail around his feet, and went unfocused for a few moments, holding perfectly still. Then his tail started to lash.“Nothing clear,” Arhu said, his eyes going down to slits in anger. “It’s as it was downstairs. Like the whole place is fogged over. It’s impossible to get a focus. Shadows, moving in shadow – ” He sounded unnerved. “She came in here, all right: that’s hardly news, since here’s where we found her. But I can’t see anyone else here for certain until that other she-ehhif came in and found her – “

Rhiow breathed out in annoyance.“Well, when she wakes, she’ll be able to tell what happened. One of us at least will need to be with her when the police are asking her to tell her story.”

“And there’s another question,” Siffha’h said. “Who called the cops? And what were they told?”

Sif slid out from behind the toilet, glanced around to make sure that no ehhif seemed to be heading her way, and jumped up on the bathroom’s windowsill, peering downward. “Because there’s no ambulance out there,” she said. “Two police cars, though. No, here comes a third one.”

“Maybe it’s running late?” Urruah said.

But the people who came up the stairs in the next few minutes, more or less in a crowd, and talking fairly loudly, were policemen, not any kind of ambulance crew.“Okay, okay, could we have some room here please?” said a voice from outside. “Thanks, sister – Come on, how’re we supposed to move in here? Thanks – ”

Into the bathroom came a big beefy sandy-haired man wearing a dark blue police uniform and a huge gun at his hip. He looked around the room and at the people in it with what to Rhiow seemed like an expression of faint scorn.“So where’s the corpse?” he said. “Lady who called said there was a stiff up here.”

“I think the report may have been premature,” Helen said, standing up over Dolores and Ray. Her tone was cool: Rhiow could just imagine what she was thinking about this policeman’s way with a crime scene.

“Okay, what happened?” said the cop, glancing around the room, taking in the expensive people, the expensive clothes, the spilled pills, and finally Dolores, now sitting up on the floor half-supported by Ray, and looking very woozy and sheepish. “You pass out or something, lady?”

“I don’t know,” Dolores said. “I was downstairs and I didn’t feel well. I thought maybe it was the heat. I came up here to try to freshen up – and then – then I – ” Dolores stopped suddenly, as if she was having second thoughts about what she was saying, how it might sound. And indeed the pressure of all those eyes on her – and the expressions on the faces looking into the bathroom, like people trying not to look too eager to hear something that would turn into juicy, sordid gossip later – “I don’t know,” Dolores said. “I woke up here. Oh, Ray, I’m so sorry, I feel like such a fool!”

“It’s all right,” Ray said, “it’s all right…” He was rocking her a little, stroking her hair and trying to soothe her.

Watching this, the cop’s expression let go a little of its previous scorn: he started to look more kindly, though annoyed. “You want my advice, lady,” he said, “lay off the sauce. Don’t think I didn’t see the spread downstairs. Had to be enough booze to float the Queen Mary in.” He turned around and, no longer seeming inclined to use his annoyance on Dolores, pointed it at the people in the doorway and the hallway instead. “Okay, what’re the rest of you doing? Come on, nothing to see here, let the lady have some air, you’d think you wanted to see a corpse or something!”

The shocked expressions and their owners backed away from the door as the cop headed for it.“Don’t know what’s the matter with you folks,” he said as he pushed through the door and out into the hall. “What I want to know now is, who called us and reported a dead person when there wasn’t one? Hah? Ever heard of being charged for wasting police time? Hah?”

The increasingly loud sound of footsteps out in the hall suggested that people were starting to leave the area quickly, before someone in a uniform started asking the question of specific persons rather than the region at large. Shortly there was no one left in the room but Helen, Ray and Dolores, and the four unseen People.

“Come on, let’s get you up,” Helen said. She took one of Dolores’s arms: Ray took the other. Between them they pulled Dolores to her feet. She staggered a little, then leaned against the edge of the counter with the sinks, getting her breath.

“I can’t thank you enough, Miss,” Ray said, “Miss – “

“Just call me Helen.” She smiled at Ray, then turned her attention back to Dolores. “Miss, are you all right now?”

Dolores had turned herself around and was looking at herself in the mirror. A wan, sad sort of look it was, hopeless and helpless, as if the world had betrayed her one more time.“I think so,” she said, looking at Helen in the mirror. “But I feel so…so…” She shook her head.

“It’s all right,” Helen said, and turned away.

“Oh, but it’s not!” Dolores said. It wasn’t Helen she was saying it to, though, but Ray: she turned to him, clung to him. “You know what’s going to happen now! This is going to be all over the magazines next week. Or on that horrible radio show of Parsons’. How Dolores Canton can’t hold her liquor, how I passed out so cold that everybody thought I was dead, and the police were called, and…” She gulped as if something horrible had just occurred to her. “There are even going to be people who’ll claim this was some kind of publicity stunt to get my career going again. Oh,Ray, what studio’s going to hire me now? What am I going to do — ?”

“You’re going to do exactly as we agreed,” he said softly into her ear. “We’ll go to that meeting like we planned…and things like this are going to stop happening to you. Okay? Okay. Just trust me, Dolores. Come on, I’ll walk you downstairs and we’ll get your wrap.”

“You mean you’re not afraid to be seen with me after this? Oh, Ray, what if they — ”

“They won’t. Of course I’m not afraid. Now come on, darling. – Yes, all right, you’re a little wobbly. It’ll pass. Too much excitement, and okay, maybe one glass of wine too many – “

They paused, for suddenly standing there in the doorway was Elwin Dagenham, actually wringing his hands in distress as his gaze took it all in, especially the scattered pills.“Oh, Miss Canton, are you – did you – “

“I’m all right,” she said. “No, truly, Mr. Dagenham. I’m fine. I’ll be going now.”

“It’s all right, you don’t have to do that – “

“I do,” Dolores said. “I’m sorry. Ray, please – “

“Yes, all right,” Ray said. He nodded at Helen and walked Dolores slowly out of the room, murmuring to her as they went. Just for a moment, as he went out, Rhiow saw a glance pass between him and Dagenham: a strangely neutral look, as of people who mean to say something to each other later on. Out in the hall, the last few people lingering there stared at Ray and Dolores, watching them, and then hurried away in various directions, whispering. But Dagenham stood there still, his glance darting nervously around the bathroom.

Rhiow ignored him for the moment, coming out from behind the toilet.“Arhu,” she said, “if you can’t See, you can hear. Follow them. Listen to them. We have to know just when and where that meeting is. Go home with them if you have to, but find out.”

He flirted his tail“yes” and headed for the door. “Sif?”

“With you,” Siffha’h said, and went after him.

Watching Ray and Dolores go out, under his breath Urruah said,“It’s a shame that you didn’t have time to ‘tailor’ Dolores’s cure a little more.”

Rhiow looked at him.“What? How?”

Hwaith, sitting next to Urruah and peering out into the room, now glanced at Urruah and flicked an ear in agreement.“So that she’d have come out of this sick enough to have to spend a night or two in the hospital,” Hwaith said, “and couldn’t make it to this ‘meeting’ they’re talking about.”

Rhiow considered what he was saying and then lashed her tail“no”. “There wasn’t time for that kind of tweaking,” she said. “Though I understand your concern — ”

Helen meanwhile had turned to the mirror as Ray and Dolores went out and was apparently intent on adjusting her hair, not that Rhiow could see that it particularly needed any adjusting. Dagenham was looking at her, and Helen was coolly failing to notice the look without actually ignoring it: a delicate business, one worthy of a Person.

“Miss, uh, Walks — Walker – ?”

Helen looked at him at last.“I’d like to thank you,” Dagenham said. “That could have been very – uncomfortable for Miss Canton.”

“I’m sure she just had a little too much heat,” Helen said, “a little too much excitement. There are so many … attentive people downstairs.” She allowed her smile to warm a few degrees. “Some of them very attentive indeed.”

“Yes, thank you, that’s partly why I’m still here – ” When I really need to be downstairs talking to the police? Rhiow thought to herself. Yeah, I just bet. “There are some gentlemen downstairs who very much want to talk to you before you leave. One of the vice-presidents from Goldwyn, and the casting director from Paramount – “

Helen’s eyes widened just slightly. One above us, what now? she said silently in the Speech.

As if I know? Rhiow said. On a night like this, when everything’s happening at once? Ride the moment, cousin!

“Oh dear,” Helen said, “I don’t know what they’ve said to you, but I couldn’t possibly – “

“Miss Walker,” Dagenham said, coming into the room and actually reaching out and grabbing one of Helen’s hands. She started. “Please. I promised them you’d talk to them before you left. Just talk to them, that’s all. Oh, please!”

The desperate urgency in his voice was very strange. But then Rhiow thought about it, considering what kind of local political capital a climber in these particular show-business regions could make of the introduction, the“discovery”, of some new starlet. And what’s in it for him after word gets around that the ‘new starlet’ got her big break at one of his parties? He’s more sought-after than ever: every girl in town wants to get in here. Who benefits? Not him directly. He doesn’t look the type — Butthen Rhiow stopped herself. Whisperer dear, listen to me, I’m spending time speculating about some ehhif’s chances of sexual success! Sif’s right, it’s too perverse —!

“Well,” Helen said after a moment. “If it’s just to talk to them – ” She flicked a glance into the mirror at where Rhiow, Urruah and Hwaith were sitting. And then what? What happens when one of them offers me a contract?

Urruah flicked an ear at her. Hire an agent?

Oh, thanks a lot!

Go on, Rhiow said. There are some other things we can be looking into. And we’ll check on the Silent Man in the meantime.

“Please, Miss Walker!” Dagenham said. “They’re not used to being kept waiting – “

Helen smiled into the mirror.“Then perhaps it’s as well they are,” she said, “for a few minutes at least. If they’re thinking I’m something out of the ordinary, perhaps there’s no harm in reinforcing the impression.” She straightened, turned away from the mirror. “Shall we?”

Dagenham practically fled the bathroom, hurrying down the hall. Helen threw a glance over her shoulder at the three People, then headed out after him.

Urruah, Rhiow and Hwaith came out into the room and all stretched: being cramped up into that little space behind the toilet had left them all feeling a bit tight in the joints, psychically if not physically.“Interesting development,” Hwaith said, glancing around and wrinkling his nose at the many ehhif-scents still lingering in the hot little room.

“Not half as interesting as the one that probably brought poor Dolores here,” Rhiow said as she headed for the door and glanced down the hall in Helen’s wake. The hallway was empty; Helen and Dagenham had gone straight downstairs. “Take a moment, hear it as the Whisperer heard it with me – “

Urruah and Hwaith both went silent as they all headed down the stairs, keeping carefully to one side in case any ehhif came up. But the hallways in this side of the house were now very quiet– whatever ehhif had been here had cleared out in a hurry, most likely with the arrival of the police. Halfway down the stairs, as they turned at the landing, Hwaith looked over at Rhiow, and she wasn’t entirely surprised to see him bristling. “Are you thinking what I am?” he said. “That these ehhif are dabbling in what their kind call black magic?”

She switched her tail as she headed down the second flight of stairs, a tense“yes”. “It was so cunningly couched,” Rhiow said. “It’d be easy for a careless listener to think they were hearing somebody talk about one of the Powers that Be — ”

Urruah’s eyes were narrow as they came down onto the ground floor level. “Ugly,” he said. “The Strong Ones’, my tail — it’s the Lone One’s jackals they’re talking about!”

“Yes,” Rhiow said. “Its hangers-on, the decayed entities that suck and tear at the edges of life. They always love it when some poor deluded bunch of ehhif get suckered into thinking they’re ‘Higher Forces’ that can be called and commanded to make their lives work. No good ever comes ofit!”

She was bristling too now, and it took some effort for Rhiow to calm herself.“Sorry,” she said to Hwaith. “We’ve had run-ins with such ehhif before. They’re always looking for dark places to make contact with sa’Rraah’s jackals. Too often they wind up down in the train tunnels.”

“Some of them have died of their meddling down there,” Urruah said. “Other ehhif have thought they’d fallen foul of the trains. It would’ve been lovely if it’d been that simple. Or that clean.” His tail was lashing. “But I’m thinking about something else. ‘The Great Old One’ – “

“Yes,” Rhiow said. “The Dark Lady’s friend?”

“I suppose,” Hwaith said, “the lesser hatreds wouldn’t mind latching onto a greater one, if they thought it meant a better feed…”

Rhiow growled a little in her throat at that. It had never occurred to her to think of sa’Rraah as the lesser of two evils. Queen Iau’s dark daughter was Entropy’s mistress and inventor, mother of the love of pain and death, heart of all the things wrong with this universe. But now, she thought, there are more universes than ours to think of. A whole different sheaf, perhaps. Where other gods work and move…

The Whisperer was silent in the back of her mind: unusually so. It’s strange, she thought: we tend to think of the Queen as the ruler of everything. But it seems there are boundaries even to Her power, for the Dark Lady’s friend seems to come from beyond them. And then…what’s beyond that?

Silence still from the Whisperer as they threaded through the corridors that led back to the parts of the house where the party was still going on. Rhiow’s tail was twitching with unease. Arhu, she said silently, what news?

They’re on the way home, he said. We’re in the back seat of their car.

Any useful conversation as yet?

Nothing new, Arhu said. She’s arguing with him a little. Doesn’t really want to do what he’s suggesting – it’s making her uneasy.

He’s not letting it lie, though, Siffha’h said. Keeps telling her that the Strong Ones are the answer to all her problems. Rhiow could feel the fur lifting along Sif’s back in revulsion. He’ll wear her down again, especially in the shape she’s in at the moment.

Rhiow flicked an ear in unhappy agreement as they came out into the front hall, all still sidled, and crowded off to one side of the doorway to eye the crowd gathered there. Get that date and time! she said. And especially the place. If we can get there and check the spot where they’re meeting beforehand, it may be useful.

Leave it to us, Arhu said.

The front hall was full of ehhif gossiping away at high speed. One of the cops was actually still standing there with a drink in his hand, surrounded by people talking at him, and apparently much flattered by the attention. Urruah looked at this in surprise.“Oh well,” he said, “a different time, after all – “ He waved his tail in bemusement as they headed through into the room where the band was still playing.

This room too was still full, though not many people were dancing now: most of them were gathered into knots of gossip and increasingly raucous drinking, and the band was playing with the resigned air of men trying to pretend that there was actually still someone listening to what they did. The Silent Man was where they had left him, listening to something Walter Winchell was saying: but his eyes were on Helen Walks Softly, who was off to one side of the room by the French doors, surrounded by a group of four men variously dressed in tuxedos or dark suits. One of them, younger than all the rest, slim and dark with a narrow, thoughtful face, was standing by Helen in a pose that to Rhiow somehow looked strangely proprietary. Behind them, trying not to hover too closely, Elwin Dagenham was nonetheless in a position to hear and see everything that was going on. Helen overtopped all the men around her by at least a head, and as the sidled People headed toward her, she threw them a swift glance of acknowledgement over her audience’s heads.

As they got within hearing range over the blare of the dance band, one of the ehhif, a little round man with little round glasses, was saying to Helen.“And, uh, Miss Walker… as for your other skills… can you perhaps act?”

Helen merely bowed her head a little– he was considerably shorter than she – drooped her eyelids slightly, and looked at him from under her brows, allowing a curve of smile to show and slowly grow. “Who knows,” she said, “I might be doing it right now.”

All three of the older men sucked their breaths in at the range of sultry and tempting implications that were suddenly lurking under the surface of Helen’s voice. Reading their reactions, the slim young man acquired a lopsided and somewhat mercenary smile that vanished a second later.

Rhiow glanced over at Urruah and Hwaith.“I suspect this might take a few minutes yet,” she said, putting her whiskers forward. “Let’s go on outside.”

They strolled out through the French doors. Even out here on the patio there were party guests were drinking and talking like mad, and a few determined dancers holding one another in the shadows and swaying together to the slightly distanced music.“Plainly it takes more than a guest collapsing and the cops showing up looking for a murder to shift this bunch,” Urruah said as they headed over to the edge of the patio and sat down under a table surrounded by some deck chairs near the pool. “You wonder how big an emergency you’d have to set off to get them to take notice for more than a few minutes…”

Rhiow gave him a look.“Don’t get any ideas,” she said, for Urruah was getting one of those wicked looks in his eye. “We’ve got questions to answer right now. Particularly, just who called the police? Besides someone who wasn’t in the bathroom or anywhere near Dolores, as far as we can tell – but was also sure there was a body upstairs.”

“If ‘lady’ is the word we’re looking for,” Urruah said, sounding very dry. “I think I know who you suspect.”

“Suspicion is all we’ve got at the moment,” Rhiow said. “I’m not going to do the Lone One’s work for It by accusing someone without evidence.”

Hwaith stood there waving his tail for a moment.“Well, there are ways around this problem,” he said. “I’ll go have a word with the phone.”

Urruah looked at him in confusion.“What?” he said. “It’s 1946, you don’t have caller ID yet – “

“What’s caller ID?” said Hwaith. “The phone’ll tell me what we want to know if I ask it. In a house this size, there’ll be three or four phones to ask, sure, but….”

Rhiow put her whiskers forward again, flirted her tail at Hwaith in agreement: he wandered off to head down toward the front hall.“Sometimes,” she said, “I think we get a little too reliant on our time’s tech to help us out.”

“You might have something there…”

After a few minutes Hwaith came trotting out the doors again with a satisfied look in his eye, and joined them under the table again.“The phone in the upstairs library remembers who used it last,” Hwaith said. “A woman. And it remembers her voice. Little and tinkly like a bell…”

Rhiow’s eyes narrowed. “Did it remember what she said?”

Hwaith switched his tail in negation.“Our phones don’t know words,” he said. “Just sound. This phone system isn’t sophisticated enough to handle meaning. It’s – “ He glanced at Rhiow, as if looking for words.

“Analog,” she said, “not digital. And not computer-managed, like the phone system in our time.” Rhiow knew from her old hhau’hif associate Ehef, who worked with other wizards on the CATNYP system at the New York Public Library, that a digital system was structurally much more liable to sentience than an analog one: the advent of the transistor and the densely-packed circuitry that made digital signaling possible had left the vast matter substrate of the phone system itself able to become half-alive even very early on. What state it had now reached in her home time, with quadrillionsof synapses stretching across continents and under the seas and now even into space, Rhiow couldn’t say. But Ehef always talks about the Net and the Web as if they’re alive in more than the normal “inanimate-object” way…

“Well,” she said after a moment, “that’s more than we had to go on with. You’re pretty sure it meant Anya Harte…”

“I don’t think there’s any other possible reading.”

“One thing though, Rhiow,” Hwaith said. “She didn’t make just one call. She made two.”

Rhiow blinked at that.“Who was the other one to?”

“Another woman. Beyond that, the phone wasn’t sure. All it said was that the phone at the other end was tired, said it never had any rest, just kept getting a lot of calls at all hours of the day and night…”

Rhiow’s tail was lashing as she wondered what to make of that. But her thoughts were interrupted by a tall silhouette paused between the open French doors. Helen stood there, gazing out into the darkness.

Urruah let out a small but unmistakeable“meow” from under the table. Helen’s head turned that way: a second later she casually made her way over, put her drink down onto the table, and gazed out across the pool toward the darkness of the hillside.

“Well,” Urruah said, “you had a nice crowd of suitors back there…”

“Please,” Helen said softly, “that’s an image I’ve been trying to avoid.” She sat down for a moment on one of the deck chairs by the table, pausing to rub one foot, then the other. She sighed. “Heels,” she said. “I don’t mind them every now and then, but I’m really more of a flats person…”

“So what was the outcome of that little meeting?” Urruah said.

“Well, among other things, I hired an agent,” Helen said.

Rhiow stared.“You mean – “

“There were at least five of them downstairs in the main room,” Helen said, dry. “They were already fighting over me by the time I got downstairs.” She chuckled. “I have a feeling our Mr. Dagenham gets some kind of commission on his ‘finds’.”

“So which one did you pick?” Rhiow said.

Helen smiled.“The one who was least interested in my secondary sexual characteristics,” she said. “Sometimes my fellow ehhif can be unusually easy to read, and the only figure this one saw when he was looking at me had a lot of zeroes attached.” Her smile acquired that feral quality again, and Rhiow, seeing it, wondered at how unusually feline the expression was for an ehhif. Contagion, she thought, amused. “Once I had representation sorted out, I went to talk to the studio people. I think it went fairly well.” The smile got broader, and if possible, more smug.

Urruah, surprisingly, looked a little concerned.“You don’t think this business might interfere with your work?” he said.

Helen sat down and pushed her hair back with a thoughtful look.“I’m not sure now that it’s not part of it,” she said. “Normally I’d certainly have seen them off. But you know how it is when the events of the moment suddenly put tools in your hand that you weren’t expecting, but that’ll be useful. The Manual says that when the universe itself isimperiled, it may try to find ways to help you that won’t get it, or you, in trouble.” She looked thoughtful. “I find myself wondering whether some of those offices, especially the ones at the studios, are going to be places it’ll be useful for us to have entr?e, and an alibi for being there.” She looked over at Rhiow. “And there’s at least one of those studios that’s of interest to us: the one that had the fire. It’s one of several that’re making me a job offer. I imagine I could tell my agent I’ve got a preference for that one.”

Urruah sat switching his tail, thinking. Rhiow watched this process with interest for a moment, then said to Helen,“But, cousin, when we’re through with all this – “

Helen shrugged.“I can ‘vanish,’” she said. “Starlets did that sometimes. A moment of fame, then suddenly something takes them away: marriage, a change of heart…”

Urruah looked up suddenly.“Murder,” he said.

Helen looked shocked.“I’d never stage such a thing,” she said.

“I wasn’t saying you would,” said Urruah, sounding uneasy. “But it’s occasionally been an occupational hazard. Ehhifs’ reactions to the she-ehhif held up before them in movies as desirable can be… complex. And sometimes deadly.”

Helen breathed out, stretched.“I know,” she said. “Well, I’m not going to be the usual starlet: there can’t be that many who’re also wizards. And killing a wizard isn’t all that easy. So let’s not worry about that right now.” She stood up again. “I should go in and deal with Freddie, he needs contact information for me…”

“Freddie?” Rhiow said.

“My agent,” said Helen. “Freddie Fields. He’s a new young agent with a company called MCA.” Urruah’s eyes went wide: Rhiow made a note to ask him why later on. Helen, though, was now wearing a somewhat considering look. “Shouldn’t take more than a moment to do a wizard-spoof on my own cellphone so that it thinks it’s got a ‘40’s local phone number.” She looked down at Hwaith. “You think the local phone system will talk to mine?”

“If properly introduced,” Hwaith said, “shouldn’t be a problem. Make an excuse to use the queens’-room for a few minutes and we can take care of it.”

“Good,” Helen said. “And we can go touch base with Mr. Runyon and let him know what’s happened.”

“He was interested?” Hwaith said as they headed back toward the French doors.

Helen laughed softly.“Are you kidding? If we’re not careful, this little escapade’s likely to wind up in one of his stories. I want to make sure he conceals the facts sufficiently to avoid any time paradoxes. But to say that he found what was going on funny – I think it’d be an understatement.”

They headed back into the main room. The music had thankfully gone quiet now, the band having taken advantage of the general disinterest in what they were doing to take a break and get themselves some booze and food. Over by the table that Runyon and Winchell were sharing, the studio people were arguing in lowered but intense voices, and Runyon was jotting on his pad– not the normal bold block letters he used for casual communication, but something quick and flowing. Shorthand, Urruah said silently to Rhiow. Look at him go! He put his whiskers right forward. They may be sorry some day that they didn’t go have this conversation somewhere else. Do they thinkjust because he can’t talk that he can’t hear?

It does make you wonder, Rhiow said.

As Helen strolled smiling back over to the group, their conversation got a little more hushed, then changed course and picked up again.“Miss Walker,” said one of the men, “Goldwyn would be most interested in testing you for a new romantic drama – “

“Miss Walker, wouldn’t you be more interested in trying something less predictable, possibly even a musical! You could – “

“Paramount is going to be the forefront this year of a whole new idiom in film, we’re calling it film noir – “

They were all talking at once now, and it was impossible for Rhiow to make much sense of anything that was going on. Helen merely stood there exchanging an amused look with slim young Mr. Fields, who stood with his arms crossed and was taking everything in. Rhiow, for her own part, sat down and watched the Silent Man scribbling away, a faint smile on his face. Cousin, she said to him silently, how are you holding up?

Just fine, he said: just fine. He didn’t stop writing for a moment. How about you?

Well enough for the moment, Rhiow said, flicking an ear at the sound of the front door opening again for someone to leave or some new guest to arrive. I can hardly believe they’re still turning up here. How long do these things usually go on?

Pretty late sometimes, the Silent Man said. You’d be surprised, sometimes they —

He stopped. She could feel a shock of surprise go through him. On the pad, the Silent Man’s hand froze in place; his eyes went to the doorway to the front hall, to the sound of a woman’s voice speaking, footsteps —

Rhiow go up, turned toward the doorway. There was a woman standing there: dark blonde hair, a high broad forehead, dark down-slanting eyes– handsome enough for a queen-ehhif, Rhiow thought, but by no means up to the standard of the beauties who otherwise were everywhere at this gathering. The woman wasn’t dressed for a party, but in a relatively dark and conservative waist-level jacket and below-the-knee skirt and a dark hat witha veil, like someone who’s just gotten off a train in an old movie. The Silent Man was looking at her like someone who sees coming toward him something he’s dreaded for a long time.

Next to him, Walter Winchell looked from the Silent Man to the blonde woman, and back to the Silent Man again.“Damon – “ he said.

The Silent Man shook his head as the woman began walking toward to them. Then he stood up to greet her, as Winchell did. Helen, for the moment, stood her ground, and it obscurely reassured Rhiow to see her new agent do the same. But the other studio people standing around each edged backward a little, as if both anxious to dissociate themselves from something that was about to happen, and unwilling to miss seeing it.

“Well,” the woman said, and looked at them all: and looked Helen up and down.

Helen merely nodded to the woman courteously, but said nothing.

“Patrice,” said Winchell.

The woman looked at him.“Walter,” she said, and turned her eyes away to Runyon again.

“I called the house to try to reach you, Damon,” Patrice said. “And stopped by afterwards. You were out. But I managed to catch up with you eventually.” She glanced around. “Surprising to see you out and about – especially since all I’ve heard from you and the doctors lately is how sick you’ve been.”

The Silent Man made no move to reach for his pad. He simply stood there and looked her in the eye.

She came closer to him, looked up at him. Patrice was about a head shorter than he; when she looked up to meet his eyes, her face twitched a little, almost as if her neck hurt her from having done this a thousand times before.“I just had to see for myself,” Patrice said, “how you were.”

Runyon opened his mouth.“Been better,” he said, in a nearly inaudible whisper. To Rhiow’s ears, the pain in the two words was incredible, and it had nothing to do with the merely mechanical agony the Silent Man was suffering from the ruin now present where his vocal cords had been.

Patrice looked from him to Helen Walks Softly: a still look, chilly and assessing, and one which Helen did not try to avoid.“Yes,” Patrice said, “I’d say you have.”

Out in the rest of the room, a circle of relative quiet was gradually spreading away from them as if the two words that Runyon had managed to utter were working some kind of dire sympathetic wizardry of their own on the place. Heads were turning toward the frozen little tableau: Patrice, the Silent Man, Helen, and the agent and the studio people standing like embarrassed statues behind them. For a couple of breaths there was no movement, no words were spoken.

Then Patrice said,“I just wanted you to know that I’ve been down here from Reno the last few days to fetch the last of my things that were in storage. I’ve also sent for my boxes from the New York apartment and the Florida house. Everything’s on its way to Reno now. So don’t worry about getting in touch with me again when you get back to New York. There’ll be no need.”

The Silent Man’s mouth moved. Patrice, his lips said: but this time there wasn’t even a breath of sound. Somewhere across the room, ice tinkled in a glass: out in the front hallway, heels clacked across the tile, went quiet.

“Damon,” Patrice said, “I’ve been putting it off, but it’s time. I can’t just keep putting off living my own life any more. It looks like you’re finally letting go of me, which is good. I won’t ever forget you. How could I? But it’s all over. I just thought I had to say it to you at last before I left.”

He simply looked down at her, his face frozen, the brittle bright light of the room’s crystal chandeliers glinting off his glasses.

“The car’s waiting,” she said. “I should go. Goodbye.”

She turned away. Quietly and without stopping to speak to anyone else, Patrice made her way out through the bright room, past the people who stood and watched, out through the front hall, out the front door. Behind her lay a wake of glances that looked first in her direction, then in the Silent Man’s. Out in the front hall, just quickly there and gone again, though nowhere near Patrice, Rhiow caught a flash of a sky-blue dress, heard a faint tap of heels.

Slowly the Silent Man sat back down in his chair, then reached out to the coffeepot on the table, picked it up, tried to pour himself another cup. But the pot was empty. The hand that held the pot was shaking, and Rhiow thought this did not entirely have to do with caffeine. A dark ehhif came hurriedly across the room, picked up the pot and took it away.

Winchell was still looking after her. The Silent Man picked up his pencil again, pulled the pad over to him, and stared at the shorthand-covered page on top as if having trouble remembering how it had gotten that way. After a moment he tore that page off, laid it aside, and wrote on the pad, pushed it over to Winchell as the coffeepot was brought back full.

“Wonder how she knew I was here…” Winchell read under his breath.

He looked off to one side, where a sharp-faced, sharp-eyed woman in a dark evening dress and an extravagant hat had been watching the whole passage most keenly. Now that woman looked away, picked up the cocktail she had briefly put down and started an animated conversation with a short bald man in a tuxedo.“My money says somebody called our little Hedda over there,” Winchell said, “and Hedda called Patrice.” His face creased into a fierce frown. “You know as well as I do that she and Louella Parsons have been digging into your story for months, dropping little hints in their columns. And Hopper wasn’t here earlier, Damon: she turned up after the excitement with the cops. Could’ve been that after she got the call from whoever told her you were here, she called Patrice herself, then came to see the excitement. Dollars to doughnuts it’ll be on the radio when she does her show in a couple of days…”

Rhiow glanced around at Hwaith and Urruah. I’d start getting unsidled if I were you, she said. Somehow I doubt we’re going to be here much longer. She jumped up on the empty chair on the near side of the Silent Man, looking at him closely.

The Silent Man was writing on his pad again, shaking his head. After a moment he shoved the pad at Winchell.

THE STORY’S BEEN OTHER PEOPLE ALL MY LIFE. NEVER GET USED TO BEING ONE MYSELF. TIME TO GO.

Winchell glanced at the words, frowned, poured Runyon another cup of coffee.“One for the road?” he said.

The Silent Man nodded. Helen came to stand by the table on the far side.“I’ll be heading out shortly as well,” she said, apparently to him, but also to Rhiow, and then to Urruah as he slipped out from under one of the buffet tables and Hwaith as he came in through the French doors. “Mr. Fields and I have some matters to discuss, and some appointments to set up for tomorrow. Mr. Runyon – thanks again for your kindness.” And I’ll be in touch with you all first thing in the morning, she added silently to him and the others, so we can discuss what we can do with what’s started happening to me. Rhiow, anything from Arhu?

Not as yet, she said. Go ahead, Helen. Call if there’s need. We’ll see you in the morning.

Dai stih?, my cousins, Helen said, and moved off, heading for the pool terrace in company with Mr. Fields.

Winchell was looking out across the room, staring down the many eyes still stealing glimpses at the other man at the table, who was now looking at the torn-off pages from his pad.“Damon,” he said, “you want me to drive home behind you?”

The two men’s eyes met, and though the look was very still and composed, Rhiow was surprised at the warmth hidden in it. This is his only real friend, she thought, and he’s going to need his friends, this next while… But the Silent Man shook his head, reached for the pad. MAY HAVE SOMETHING FOR YOU IN AFEW DAYS, he wrote. FOR THE COLUMN, AND YOUR OWN SHOW. BIGGER STORY THAN MINE WILL EVER BE.

Winchell looked at him for several moments, then nodded.“All right,” he said. “Drop me a note about it tomorrow, if you can. And keep me posted.”

The Silent Man nodded, put his pad away, got up. Behind him, on a chair nearer the wall, Sheba had been sleeping for some time, fed and petted into doziness quite early in the proceedings. Now Runyon picked her up: she purred as he settled her into her accustomed place on his shoulder and almost immediately dropped off into a doze again. The Silent Man looked around the room, sketched an ironic salute to the gorgeous crowd who were still watching him and trying not to look as if they were. Then he headed for the door. Rhiow leapt down from the chair and went after him, Urruah and Hwaith following after.

In the front hallway, Elwin Dagenham was standing by the front door, talking in a low voice to a fair-haired young man– working for whom? Rhiow wondered. Possibly some PR person, a flack for one of the local columnists or fan magazines — ? Whose secrets, whose pain are being sold off at the moment?… But the Silent Man paused by the front door, looked at Dagenham, nodded to him, mouthed the words: Thank you for a lovely evening.

Dagenham looked at him with an odd stricken expression, and nodded.“Thank you for coming,” he said.

The door was opened for Runyon, and he walked out and headed down the stairs toward where the cars were parked. Out past the house, away down the hill, the lights of Los Angeles glittered. As Rhiow and the others followed him down the stairs, she found herself suddenly feeling as if she was being stared at by many cold, distant, heartless little eyes. But whether the ones before her or behind her were more heartless, she couldn’t tell.

The fur rose all over her. Behind her, she could feel the house watching, silent, waiting, almost like a live thing itself: and in it, something else that watched as well. But what?

Dear Whisperer, let us soon find out…

The car parked again, the doors shut, the cat food dishes outside the rear French doors replenished, Rhiow had thought the Silent Man might now want to get caught up on some of the sleep he was surely still short on after the previous day’s work. But instead he changed out of his party clothes into silk pajamas and bathrobe and slippers, brewed himself a fresh pot of coffee, sat down at the typrwriter, and began to transcribe his notes.

Over on the sofa, Sheba was dozing again. Urruah and Hwaith had tucked themselves up on the bookshelves, meatloafed and compact, with eyes half closed; Rhiow was sitting looking out the garden doors into the darkness, digesting the evening’s events and debating the team’s next move with herself while waiting for news from Arhu and Siffha’h. Behind her, the typing went rattling along, paused, rattled on again.

I hate to ask, she thought, studying at her dark reflection in the dark glass. He’s in enough pain. There’s always the Whisperer.

And indeed the Whisperer could tell her much of what she needed to know. But She could not tell Rhiow the truly important thing, which was what the Silent Man thought and felt about it all. Am I sure we really need to know about this? Is asking him about it merely needlessly increasing the local entropy of emotion, and doing sa’Rraah’s work?

Yet he’s in this quest with us, willingly. We have to know his issues to make sure they don’t interfere with his ability to do this work.

Rhiow sat there quite straight, her tail wrapped around her feet, while the typing went on, stopped, went on again. A page was pulled out of the typewriter, laid aside, coffee was drunk, another page was rolled in, the typing started again. Two or three more times this process was repeated, and Rhiow sat and thought and listened to the night. Outside, to her surprise, she caught the distant sound of something she had only heard in Central Park before now: a nightingale. This one was hidden away up in the gray-needled scrub pines over the wall behind the house, pouring out its little liquid bursts of song and apparently quite untroubled by the staccato song of the typewriter. Amazingly noisy thing, Rhiow thought. Computers have spoiled us, truly—

The noise stopped a few seconds later. Rhiow looked over her shoulder and saw the Silent Man pouring himself another cup of coffee. As he drank and leaned back in his wooden typing chair, staring at the page still in the typewriter, Rhiow stood up, stretched, wandered over to the desk.“Truly,” she said, “as the Queen’s my witness, I’ve never seen an ehhif drink coffee the way you do. It’s a wonder your brain’s not just one big bean.”

The Queen? he said, and yawned.

“God,” said Hwaith.

Oh.

Urruah opened an eye and looked down at Rhiow.“He’d love our – “ She shot him a look. “Where we come from,” Urruah said, closing the eye halfway again. “There’s this chain of stores, they have this coffee that – “

“Urruah,” Rhiow said. The last thing they needed right now was a discursion on grande frappucinos.

“He’d really like them,” Urruah said, “that’s all I’m saying…”

Rhiow waved her tail.“Cousin,” she said to Runyon, “are you finished with that?”

The Silent Man gave Rhiow a tolerant look. Come on up.

She leapt, sat down over to the typewriter’s left, wrapped her tail around her feet again. “Cousin,” Rhiow said, “forgive me this. I dislike having to ask about something that caused you the discomfort we saw. But I must, so that we’re quite clear about what happened tonight. Who is Patrice?”

He sighed, leaned further back in his chair, folded his arms across his chest. Patrice Amalfi del Grande Runyon, he said. My second wife.

“You said earlier that she was away on business,” Urruah said.

Monkey business, said Runyon, as usual.

He was silent for a few breaths. We were married in’32, the Silent Man said. Knew each other for a long time before my first wife died. Another silence fell. His face didn’t change, staying still and cool. But the pause felt so spiny with suppressed guilt and anger that Rhiow wouldn’t have dared break it. For a long time we were happy together. Then, though – I got sick –

Another long silence. Rhiow looked away: Urruah, though, gazed steadily at the Silent Man, in quiet support of something Rhiow could tell was very much a tom-ish kind of pain. She took up with a younger guy, Runyon said. They’ve been living in Reno, where they met when Patrice was posted there for national service during the war. It’s been an open secret in town for a while now. Mostly the publicity people have kept quiet about it. The cool look broke: Runyon smiled bitterly. If you’ve still got enough clout in town to get them in trouble, enough friends at the studios who’d be angry on your behalf, the gossip columns and the two big name ladies with their radio shows know better than to foul their own nests by opening their yaps in public.

The smile faded. But when your star starts to fall, when you start losing that clout, all bets are off. And most people here have noticed that I don’t have any new projects going. Some have noticed that I’m closing the last few down. The real estate agent’s been fielding offers for the house, on the quiet. I’m only here for a little while, before going back to New York — He did not say “for the last time”: it was implicit in his tone. So now the gossip columns see that they’ve got a little while left to get some mileage out of me. Now they think I’m game. Well, I’ve got news for them. The game won’t run.

He reached out to his cup and took a long swig, finishing the cold coffee in it. And why should I? What they’re pulling doesn’t really hurt. Neither does what Patrice just pulled, said the Silent Man. He put the cup down again. Love’s a mug’s game anyway.

He leaned back again, stretching out his legs. To Rhiow there was nothing even slightly relaxing about the gesture: the tension underlying it was terrible. Romance is nothing to me any more. Nothing for anybody, most of the time, not really. But me, I gave it up way back when I realized which way the wind blew.

Rhiow glanced over at Hwaith: he glanced back, his eyes still half-closed but shadowed with pity and pain. Urruah, though, stood up, stretched, stepped down from the bookshelf, and lay down on the desk on the other side of the typewriter, in the pool of light from the single lamp.

He stretched out his own hind legs out thoughtfully, giving the Silent Man a dry look.“Staying right there in character,” Urruah said. “Just what you’d expect in one of your stories from some guy with a glass in front of him in the middle of the night.”

His tone was wry. The Silent Man looked at Urruah and let out a breath, a short one, as if considering and then holding back some other response. No glass for me, he said after a moment. I don’t drink. It always made me sick, even before my present – physical problems. Now I’ve got all these pills, too, and the doctors told me not to be tempted to mix them. I listen to my doctors…like I have a choice.

He turned his coffee cup around on the desk.…Not many choices left to me now, he said. I’m making my last few. Don’t need romance. Sex wouldn’t be high on the list, either: there’s too much to do before I go. But your priorities have to be different. He gave Urruah back a look at least as wry as Urruah’s had been. You’ve got the looks of a brisk young tom about town. Got all the necessary equipment. Urruah’s whiskers went forward, an appreciative response: Rhiow restrained herself from any comment, verbal or nonverbal. Your whole life’s in front of you. And you – He looked over at Rhiow. You’re his doll?

“This is getting a little personal, isn’t it?” Rhiow said.

The Silent Man grinned at her: the expression was a bit brittle, but genuine enough. You started it, Blackie, he said. So you’re not his dame, then. Got a boyfriend somewhere else.

Rhiow commanded herself not to bristle. The Silent Man’s eyes glinted a little. Enjoyment? But not of her discomfiture. There was something else going on. This was what he did, in his life: he looked into the fine detail of the lives of the beings around him, and exposed them to view. What he was doing was healthy, his way of fighting the Lone One, even in these depths of pain… though it still made Rhiow twitch.

“Not at present,” Rhiow said. “In your words, I’m missing some of the ‘necessary equipment.’ With us, you need one for the other. It’s – “ She shrugged her tail. “Just a physical thing.”

The Silent Man turned the coffee cup around a few more times, stared past it. So you don’t do love, then.

Rhiow was shocked into wide-eyed silence. Hwaith opened his eyes all the way and looked at the Silent Man with an expression of incomprehension. But Urruah simply flicked an ear and put his whiskers forward.“Of course we do,” he said. “What are we, animals or something?”

The Silent Man looked at him sharply. Then he bowed his head. Sorry, he said. He rubbed his face.

“Ehhif,” Urruah said, “hardly have a monopoly on the personal version of the force that drives the stars. Life’s about lots more than sex for us. We have our romances, our frustrations. Our tragic loves and our triumphant ones – “

“Sehau,” said Hwaith rather suddenly, “and Aefheh.”

The Silent Man looked up.“What?”

Urruah’s whiskers went forward again as he glanced at Hwaith, then back at the Silent Man. “Not what,” he said. “Who.” His tail twitched slowly. “If you walked up to a cat anywhere on this planet and said the words ‘true love’,” he said, “probably those two names are the first words you’d get back. A story from a long time ago, when the world was young. Two People who loved each other, and let nothing stop that: nothing at all.”

The Silent Man looks away. The world is full of things that stop it, he said.

“Full of things that’ll try,” Rhiow said, “and one in particular.” She looked from Urruah to Hwaith, her mood shifting toward amusement.

Hwaith flicked an ear.“Might want to give him the shorter version,” he said. “The middle sections might be tedious for an ehhif.”

“The short version,” Urruah said, “but not the simple one.” He glanced at Rhiow.

She settled herself down into what Iaehh still called“meatloaf” mode, all paws tucked under, and shot Urruah an amused look. It was not so long ago that she and Saash had been taking turns making sure Arhu knew this story, part of every educated Person’s knowledge, which circumstance and the lack of a dam’s tutelage had denied him as a kitten. Now, of course, Rhiow’s part in that education was done – as Arhu could hear what he needed from the Whisperer Herself – and Saash had since taken up the narrative in a way that none of them had quite expected. “No,” Rhiow said, “there’s nothing simple about it. Maybe Urruah’ll sing you one of the casual lyric versions sometime. But the best known spoken version’s formal, and a bit archaic: let it stay that way.”

She half-closed her eyes, not better to hear the Whisperer– for she didn’t need Her for this – but to summon up the memory of Saash’s old intonation, which to Rhiow’s mind had always been better, both more precise and more heartfelt than her own. Why do you always hold back on this? she could remember Saash saying one night down in her old home in the parking garage. Let it run loose and give it full value, for Iau’s sake; what’s it for but to shame the Lone One? Since it’s all about old Shadowpelt having the grace to be ashamed in the first place –

She put her whiskers forward.“There was a time,” Rhiow said, “when it was afternoon in Heaven, and the Queen’s light lay long and low across the Hearth. Then as evening drew in, the dark shadow of her daughter sa’Rraah fell across that light – “

The Silent Man reached over to the bookshelf and pulled out a spare pad and a pencil. If the Queen is God, he said, this is possibly the Devil?

“Close enough,” Urruah said. “But more conflicted.”

Runyon raised his eyebrows, nodded. Okay—

Rhiow shot a glance at Urruah. Conflicted, indeed, she said.“Well. When they saw that shadow, the Queen’s other children drew aside to make room for the Shadowed one, for it’s rare that She comes home to the Pride, and all hope that someday She’ll come to stay.

“For a while sa’Rraah lay in the warmth of the Hearth, and none spoke. And finally the Whisperer, impatient of knowledge as always, said, ‘Sister, where have you been?’ ‘Out and about in the Worlds,’ said sa’Rraah, ‘seeing how the light and shadow strive, and which comes best from the strife.’ Now this is always the Shadowed One’s way, seeking victory rather than justice, and endings rather than beginnings; so most of those who lay about the Hearth turned their eyes away at hearing she was yet walking her old path as always, and tails twitched. But the Queen lay quiet, andsaid, “And what have you found?”

“’Life, and Life again,’ said the Lone One; ‘but never so robust that it cannot be snuffed out, or its intentions made to fail. You were unwise, O Mother, to make it so weak a prey.’

“’Perhaps it is less weak than you think,’ said Iau the Queen, ‘since despite all your efforts over the vast expanse of Time, Life yet persists.’

“Now, sa’Rraah is no fool to taunt the Queen to Her face; yet like any Person, sometimes the desire to play overcomes her. And the Queen ever sees the kitten in the Person full-grown, and will look aside and let Her tail be chewed… within reason. So each knowing this of the Other, sa’Rraah then said to the Queen, ‘Are You so sure of that that You will let me put some corner of creation to that test?’

“Hearing that, Aaurh and the Whisperer growled low in their throats. But the Queen stretched and said, ‘Daughter of mine, if you think I will let you play this play with the fabric of reality, you think wrongly. If Life is the throatball you gag at, then Life will be what bears your enmity: some small corner of it, as you say. But do not be too sure the play will go your way.’

“’And You will not interfere?’ said sa’Rraah.

“’I am in Life and cannot be separated from it,’ said the Queen. ‘But I will of Myself not act… any more than usual.’

“With this the Shadowed One had to be satisfied. Yet she growled and licked her chops. ‘And what Life shall I test?’ said sa’Rraah. ‘There is no joy in the wager unless You run some risk.’

“Risk there shall be, for you shall test People who are dearest to me,’ said the Queen. ‘And in this time that will be Sehau and Aifheh, whose time it is to be born now, and for whom I have waited long.’ And She purred so that all Heaven heard it. ‘I have wrought and intended them for each other since the deeps of time: they will express love as it will ever be best expressed among my People, and as it ought to have been before the ways were darkened and love’s time became brief.’ And just for that moment Iau opened one Eye, and its terrible light rested on sa’Rraah.

“All the Queen’s other children held utterly still, and even sa’Rraah crouched down, all dismayed: for her own work it had been that the ways of the worlds were darkened by her invention, death. Yet after a moment the Shadowed one looked up again, emboldened to spite by Iau’s forbearance. ’Queen and Mother,’ said sa’Rraah, ‘there is nothing You can make that I cannot mar.’

“The Queen merely closed her Eye again, and said, ‘That the event shall prove. Go your ways, my daughter, and do your devoir.’

“So sa’Rraah rose and stretched and padded away from the Hearth of Heaven. And in the outer circles of reality, in the world where the People dwell, Sehau was born outside a city of ehhif; and far from him, in a wild place into which her dam had been cast, Aifheh was littered.”

The Silent Man glanced up from the pad on which he’d been scribbling. What city? he said.

Rhiow looked at Hwaith, for this was a part of the story that she’d never given the slightest thought to. Hwaith shrugged his tail.

“Pittsburgh,” Urruah said.

Hwaith stared at him. Rhiow rolled her eyes. Urruah immediately tucked himself up into a more compact shape, suitable for running away suddenly if he had to: but the look in his eyes was still full of mischief.

Rhiow let out a breath.“Anyway! Sehau was a tom: Aifheh was a queen – “

But not God, said the Silent Man.

“Not God,” Rhiow said, realizing that no matter what she did, with this audience there was no hope that the telling would go smoothly. “Sehau was a brindle kitten, and Aifheh white with a black-patched pelt. Each one grew quickly, and when their kittening days were done, each did as many People do: began to roam the world, departing territories that were too full of their own kin to search for places where they could become part of new prides, and their own kits would prosper when the time came. And it was in woodland between the city and the wild that they met for the first time. Each was hungry, for they were very young, and neither was expert in the hunt as yet. Sehau had found a place in the woods where inside a little bank he could hear the fieldmice moving and speaking to each other. He meant to wait till night to catch them, when he would have the advantage: and from a hidden place in the brush he watched them go in and out of their den. But the longer he watched the less his stomach could bear it any more, nor could he wait till night. When the next fieldmouse came rustling out, he jumped on it. And from the brush behind the little bank, where Sehau could not see, Aifheh jumped on it at the same moment.

“In their shock and surprise, they fought over the mouse, and it got away. They were angry with each other: but they were so young that they soon forgot their anger, and looked at each other curiously, and exchanged names. They met again in the days that passed, and shortly they began to hunt together, because they had each been alone for so long and each missed the sound and smell and touch of other People. Soon they were friends. And before much longer Aifheh came into heat, and Sehau was ready for her; and then they were not just friends, but lovers.

“Now the Shadowed One had been watching for this; for if the loves of these two were what the Queen Herself had been awaiting them, then surely they were worth thwarting. Aifheh kindled from that first joining, and grew great with her litter: but sa’Rraah so twisted the kindling of the new lifein her that the kittens all died in her womb, and their death poisoned her, so that she too was soon to die.

“Sehau was wild with fear and grief, and cried and licked Aifheh and prayed to the Queen for her life. But Aifheh said, ‘My love, this body is only the first. We are People, and there are lives to come. I will be born again, and I will await you. Make no unnatural haste to meet me, for that Queen Iau forbids. But be born again, and I will cross the world to find you, and we will have our love again: this I swear.’

“Crying with his pain, but seeing her hope, and that it was the only way, Sehau swore by the Queen that it should be so. And Aifheh died.

“Sa’Rraah laughed at her death, and if Sehau had any fears of a long life, they were vain: for the Shadowed One saw to it that while crossing ice on a frozen river that winter, the ice broke under Sehau and the water’s flow under the surface trapped him under the ice, and there he drowned. Atthis sa’Rraah laughed again and went off into the shadows of the world, pleased with her frustration of the Queen’s great desire, and waiting to see whether there would be any need for another move in the game.

“She was more amused than surprised when a brindle kitten was born no more than a month later in the wild, and knew her own name to be Aifheh: and Sehau was born again with a white pelt and black patches, not two months after that, in another ehhif city nearby. Sehau was thrown out of her dam’shome by some ehhif as an unwanted thing, one more kitten in a place where there were too many People for too little food, and he took to the roads alone and hungry, thought searching for something more than food. Aifheh went out into the woods very young, almost before she was full weaned, knowing there was someone she needed to meet. And there in the autumn of that year they met again as kittens, and leapt on each other, and played and rolled and laughed and wept, though the sorrow was from another life, not this one: this one so far was all joy.

“Of course sa’Rraah knew of their reunion: for the game she played was new, and she had been listening at the boundary between life and the depths within life, waiting for the scent of their returning souls as Sehau and Aifheh had once waited for the rustle of the fieldmouse to come out of the bank. ‘My Dam and Queen is yet a fool,’ thought sa’Rraah, ‘to play the same move twice.’ And this time she let Aifheh and Sehau grow older, for the amusement of watching them grow and love their small doomed love, while thinking of how she would end them, this time in some way more cruel and amusing. And this time Aifheh bore her kittens live, and raised them until their eyes were just open, and they were at their most helpless: and then in those woods under the shelter of the mountains, the wild dogs found them and her and Sehau, and tore and devoured them all. But even as they died, Aifheh and Sehau renewed their oath: and sa’Rraah went away, pleased with her sport.”

The Silent Man was scribbling away at speed now, the same shorthand he had been using at the party. Now he paused and looked at Rhiow. I am detecting a pattern, he said.

Rhiow bowed her head to him in the human gesture.“Their third life,” she said, “came a few months later: for after such trauma the soul takes longer to remember its shape. And once again a brindle kitten and a white-pelt with patches like night were born, though this time the queen was the brindle again and the tom the day-and-night. This time sa’Rraah was listening more carefully for their souls, and twisted the path between the depths of Life and the world in such a way as to cause Aifheh and Sehau to be born a thousand miles apart. Alone they grew, and alone they sought for each other through a decade’s worth of years – neither ever taking a mate, each speaking to every Person they met to find some word of the other. And a legend grew up right across a continent of the two People who each sought a mate they had never met but whom they knew intimately. Eventually they found each other: and sa’Rraah saw to it that it was not until the two old age-crippled People finally set eyes on each other, across a rainy hillside clearing no more than ten feet wide, that the earth quaked in the place where they were, and the rainsoaked land slipped away from the hill and buried them alive. But in the single look they exchanged, Sehau and Aifheh remade their oath before they died.

“Sa’Rraah looked upon the crushed bodies in amusement and departed that place. But now her temper was a little on edge, for she was not used to being so thwarted by mere mortal things, crude matter with soul trapped inside. Long ago she had mocked the Queen for making mortal life, a thing neither honest matter or honest spirit, but a strange unwieldy hybrid, never to be truly at home in either Heaven or the world of concrete things. Now sa’Rraah began to suspect that she was the butt of a joke. And there is no more dangerous being anywhere than a God who thinks someone is making fun of Him.”

Urruah’s tail was twitching against the desk gently and rhythmically, an amused gesture. The Silent Man, for his own part, paused again in his shorthand. It gets worse now, I take it, he said.

“Lives four, five, and six,” Urruah said, “vary from version to version, depending on who’s telling it and how. But they boil down to: mid-length lives in which each has the most alluring possible lover presented to them – “

“Usually sa’Rraah herself in disguise,” Hwaith said.

“ – and they both refuse her, and die. Long lives during which both are repeatedly kept from meeting each other until they die. And then both killed in their mothers’ wombs, never even drawing a breath.”

And still they come back, looking for each other, said the Silent Man.

Rhiow bowed her head again.“By life seven,” she said, “when once again the brindle and the night-and-light pelted kittens are born, sa’Rraah isn’t even watching at the borderland, so certain is she that they won’t come back. But they do, and once again they’re born and find their way to one another, and they live their love for many years. Sa’Rraah, as you might guess, is furious. She comes to them in her full splendor – which is considerable: even a fallen daughter of God will command your attention when she turns up staring at you across your food bowl — and she offers them a bargain. She’ll kill them now – painlessly, peacefully – and renounce her vendetta against them, if they’ll renounce their oath. ‘I warn you,’ the Shadowed One says, ‘die now, and part, and be done with it. Die now and come again without your oath and I will release you from my enmity: you may live your lives apart, with other loves even, and go into the dark at last in peace, no more my prey. But come again and try to keep your oath and I will hunt you without mercy to the boundaries of life and into the darkness beyond: for you will sooner have a tenth life than you will have your love in my despite.’”

The Silent Man paused in his writing and glanced swiftly at Rhiow. Urruah put his whiskers right forward, looked away.

Rhiow flicked an ear at her colleague in amusement.“But they looked at each other,” she said, “and then to the Shadowed One’s astonishment and fury, they laughed at her. ‘We don’t fear you, Shadowed One,’ said Sehau. ‘Rather we pity you. Seven of our lives you have destroyed, yet you still don’t see that the fieldmouse’s nest always has one more mouse in it!’ And Aifheh said, ‘Daughter of the Queen, we put you another proposal. Give up your hunting of us and we’ll let you go free! For you’re the one who’s bound and in torment. You’ve made our oath your chain, just as you’ve done with your own old oath in the deeps of time, to kill the Life the Queen made. Break this chain, break that one as well, and go home to Heaven where your pride waits you by the Hearth!’”

The Silent Man nodded and pushed his pencil aside. And I think, he said, that’s probably the end of life seven.

“You think right,” Urruah said. “Sa’Rraah killed them out of hand.”

“But soon enough they came again,” Rhiow said. “And this time the Shadowed One actually missed them when they crossed into life: for now Aifheh and Sehau had grown bold, and decided that if sa’Rraah would play with them, then they would play with her. At the borders of Life they hid themselves just on the far side, where they could not be so clearly scented, and watched sa’Rraah pass to and fro in her rage, hunting them: and when they saw that for a moment or a month she was looking the other way, they slipped over the borderline and were born. Five whole ehhif years they lived in the world, raising their kittens and glad in each other’s love. And all that while sa’Rraah prowled the borders endlessly, looking and peering, scenting and searching for those who were not there. Finally it was one of her jackals, one of the small dark spirits that follow at her heels, that camerunning to her and told her where the lovers were.

“Sa’Rraah was enraged almost beyond the rage that drove her first from Heaven. Without a moment’s pause she flashed to where Sehau and Aifheh lived in the wild, and with her own claws stripped their souls from their bodies and flung them once more out into the dark. Yet even as she killed them, she saw their eyes meet and their oath remade.

“The Shadowed One’s fury was now even more terrible than before, and she was a prisoner of it, as the two had said: their lives and their obstinate love were a burning abscess in sa’Rraah’s side, set there by the claw of perverse fate. And above all things, she was outraged that they shoulddare to play with her. The Queen’s wayward daughter swore she should not be gulled so again. Now she patrolled the borders of life without rest, so that life in the world seemed almost to have a time of peace. And finally, as they began their ninth life, sa’Rraah caught the two souls just at the borderline, at the very place where matter and spirit are joined: and just as their souls were being knit into their dams’ flesh, she slew that flesh for the last time.”

Rhiow glanced at Urruah, whose eyes were closed now, and at Hwaith, who met her look with whiskers forward, anticipating the final kink in the story’s tail. She looked over at the Silent Man, who was still writing, and now paused, waiting.

Rhiow put her whiskers forward too.“There sa’Rraah stood over the images of what their bodies would have been had they come to full age – the brindle and the light-and-night pelt, lying there stark and unmoving now. And she laughed. But then, around her in that shadowy place on the borders between deep Life and the shallows ofmere concrete existence, suddenly there stood the Queen in Her majesty, and her daughters the Whisperer and Aaurh the Mighty, and even Urrau Lightning-Claw, come down from those dangerous places in Heaven where the Queen’s mate prowls alone. But sa’Rraah faced them all down, and laughed again.

“O my Mother and my Sisters,” said sa’Rraah, “and O my wandering Brother, I call you all to witness: the play is over. And it is as I said. Even these two who were Your pride, my Mother, both they and what they had, even those I have marred. I have won.’

“’So it would seem,” the Queen said.

“Yet then as all watched, all eyes but the Queen’s widened as something stirred about Aifheh’s shadow body. And about Sehau’s as well, an inner light shifted to be free. Then beyond all expectation each of them slowly rose up in a body that was neither wholly spirit nor wholly matter, but anew joining of the two, one brindle and one night-and-light. There Sehau looked on Aifheh, and Aifheh on Sehau, and they rushed together and rubbed against one another and bumped their heads together, and all the Queen’s children stared.

“And the Queen began to purr.

“Then the Shadowed One’s eyes went dark with fury, and she threw a bolt of her own dark fire at them to destroy them utterly. But Aifheh and Sehau shook it off as one would shake off the leavings of a dustbath, and fell to licking one another’s ears. At this sa’Rraah turned to the Queen, crying, ‘What mummery is this?’

“’None you did not give them to play out yourself,’ said the Queen. ‘For you said they would sooner have ten lives than live their love in your despite: and are you not yet my Daughter, with power to ordain and endow? From the moment you so pronounced and they yet went on to live their lovein your despite, then ten lives they would and must have; for what a God promises must be performed. And what they have, other People may now have also, thanks to you.’

“The fury of the Shadowed One turned her dark as the empty void. ‘I undo my ordainment! I abolish my endowment!’ cried sa’Rraah; but though the Heavens trembled at her roar, the two lovers were no whit troubled, nor even slightly distracted from their rubbing against one another and the twining of their tails. And even Aaurh the Mighty was fain to turn away and hide her laughter at her sister’s rage.

“‘Nor may the gifts or acts of Gods be withdrawn,’ the Queen said, ‘as you should know. So you see how your marring has fared. Though I stirred not a paw to help them, at every turn they forestalled you, even from life to life. That Life is their weapon, and sustains them as it sustains you, whether you admit it or no. Nor can you wholeheartedly will the end of that Life, for it is in you as well. Will its abolition wholeheartedly, and it will take you at your word and abolish you as well.’

“Then, furious, seeing there was nothing else to be done, sa’Rraah departed from that company, growling low. She took herself away into the darkness, and was not seen again on Heaven’s floors for long. But the Whisperer looked at the Queen and said, “Royal Dam and Queen, now tell us how Youbrought this about.”

“’I brought about nothing,’ said the Queen, ‘save through her Word, which still bears power in the worlds. And see what lengths your sister went to make it true!’ She put her whiskers forward and stretched, fore and aft. “Sa’Rraah’s own error has brought about the Gift She will never be able to undo, though she spend all this universe’s store of Time trying to do so.”

“And this Sehau and Aifheh have done by their strife against her in life after life,” said the Whisperer.

“Yet they could not have become who they became, so stubborn in strife, without my daughter time and again undoing their lives,” the Queen said. “Long I waited in fear, dreading that their time and this fate should approach, and sa’Rraah would not have that moment of spite that brought her to the Hearth and set these events in motion: for my daughter’s will must be as free as all others’, if she is to come back to the Hearth at last.”

“’So our sister is part of creation again, as she has been for long,” said Aaurh the Mighty to the Queen. ‘But this time she knows it. And now she has back something that was once hers once and was taken from her; and of her own will.’

“And the Queen said nothing, but merely purred, as is Her way when She feels it wise to let the moment’s silence speak its own word. She and Her daughters returned at length to the Hearth, the fire of which burned on, and burns still. As for Sehau and Aifheh, none have seen them since they crossed into the Tenth Life. Now they are Love personified, and Love does not need to be seen to be known. But no uncertainty of their whereabouts can change the fact that not even the Lone Power could destroy what they had – for while we have their story, we have both them, and what they had.”

Hwaith was looking a little unfocused. Rhiow glanced over at Urruah, who was studying his toes. The Silent Man, who had stopped writing a little while ago and had been sitting with his hands clasped loosely in his lap, the pencil still sticking out of them, now opened his eyes, looked sidelong at Rhiow and Urruah, and said, Malarkey.

Urruah looked at him in bemusement. Rhiow said,“Excuse me?”

Malarkey, he said. Especially about Pittburgh. Nothing like that ever happened in Pittsburgh.

Urruah gave him an amused look.“It could have been New York…”

The Silent Man thought about that, and after a moment, smiled just the slightest smile, nodded. So it could. He put his pencil down and reached out to the coffee cup, drained it, made a face at the cold stuff. Anyway, that’s some love story, he said. Make a good long opera.

Urruah put his whiskers right forward.“That’s one of the ways it’s done,” he said. “It’s often sung – part of it, or the whole thing — when there are enough queens in season, and enough toms in the neighborhood…”

The Silent Man smiled a little sourly. Bet I’ve heard it, some nights. He pushed his pad away. Love conquers all, huh?

“If it’s smart,” Hwaith said, “and careful… and lucky.”

But slowly the Silent Man’s face slipped out of that smile; his eyes looked off into some preoccupied distance. They got lucky, he said slowly. Doesn’t happen often…

“Not often enough,” Urruah said, “no. But we’re working on that.” He looked at Rhiow.

Rhiow idly wondered why. But the Silent Man was looking at her as well. A myth? he said.

“No myth,” Rhiow said. “Some of us get that last chance…that tenth life. But we get something more than just that. In Sehau’s and Aifheh’s lives we know that not even sa’Rraah herself can stop someone who’s just one play more determined than she is.”

The Silent Man nodded, and rubbed his face.

“It’s been a long night,” Rhiow said, feeling a shadow of his physical pain without even trying to get into synch with him. “Let’s call it over. There’s no point in you staying up for any news from the youngsters, cousin: we’ll wake you if anything urgent comes up.”

The Silent Man nodded, turned off the desk light, got up and headed for his room. In the dimness he paused by the couch to pick up Sheba: she stirred and muttered and dozed off again almost immediately in his arms. He nodded at the People and headed off to his bedroom. A second later the door closed.

Urruah got up and stretched.“I might go have a bite to eat,” he said, jumping down and heading for the cat food dishes.

“After that buffet?” Rhiow said, incredulous. But he was already out the back door.

“I think the Silent Man’s got the right idea,” Hwaith said. “I’m going to go check my gate…. I’ll be back later. If you hear anything from Arhu – “

“I’ll let you know,” Rhiow said. “Go well…”

Hwaith vanished.

Rhiow stayed as she was, listening to the darkness. In it she could hear an echo, distant, a voice telling itself something it really wanted to believe– and telling it at one remove, so that it was more believable: If I have all the tears that are shed on Broadway by guys in love, I will have enough salt water to start an opposition ocean to the Atlantic and Pacific, with enough left over to run the Great Salt Lake out of business. But I wish to say I never shed any of these tears personally, because I am never in love, and furthermore, barring a bad break, I never expect to be in love, for the way I look at it love is strictly the old phedinkus, and I tell the little guy as much…

Rhiow crouched there quietly in the darkness, hearing the thought fade away into others as bleak as the Silent Man started what would be a long struggle toward sleep. The muzziness of his pain medication was slowly starting to descend: something he welcomed. I must see what can be done for him, she thought, starting to doze a little herself: if anything. Best to get some rest now, though. Helen will be in touch in the morning, and by then Arhu and Sif will have some answers for us.

Tomorrow’s going to be busy…

The Big Meow: Chapter Eight

Rest came hard to her as well, and didn’t last long. Rhiow’s eyes blinked open seemingly of themselves in the time of uncertain light before the dawn. She was tired enough after the previous evening’s exertions that for a few moments she wasn’t even sure where she was, and lay gazing across the shadowy room in profound disorientation, taking in and trying to make sense of the bulky, ghost-pale furniture, the unfamiliar view out the French doors, the strange empty feel of the place.

After a few moments memory reasserted itself. From where she lay on her side on the windowsill, she could see the rest of the room to be empty of any People, either her own group or visitors from the neighborhood.

Why is it that when you most want and need sleep, you can’t get it… she thought, and got up to stretch fore and aft, yawning. The feeling of emptiness around Rhiow didn’t lessen as she gathered her wits; the whole place was devoid of waking minds – Urruah apparently gone elsewhere after his second dinner, Sif and Arhu and Hwaith and Aufwi still off about their various businesses. As for sleeping minds, the Silent Man’s consciousness was still immersed in the sleep his pain medication had finally won him, but the immersion was shallow. Soon enough the pain would break surface again and drag him up into wakefulness with it. Not far from him, Sheba drowsed, heading deeper into sleep after having apparently wakened earlier.

Worrying, Rhiow thought as she jumped softly down from the windowsill. She had had enough of those awakenings herself lately with Iaehh, as his pain and longing broke through his sleep and made him call the name of someone who couldn’t ever answer him again on this side of life. Her own sorrow was hard enough to bear at such times, and always left her wondering What can be done for him? But there were no easy answers to the question in Iaehh’s case.

Where the Silent Man was concerned, however, the situation might be different; and Rhiow had been meaning to look into this. And having spent a little while in poor Delores’s physical realm a little while ago, I’m still set for this kind of work. Let’s see what we see…

She headed over toward the shut bedroom door, purred one of the shorter versions of the Mason’s Word, and passed through the door like a ghost. On the far side she paused to glance around. Here was another very underfurnished room, all done in white. Here another set of French windows stood partway open on the palm-shadowed utility yard at the side of the house; gauzy white curtains stirred slightly in the faintest breeze from outside. In the bed, under the covers, the Silent Man lay very still, curled up nearly in fetal position. It was troubling, almost shocking to see in an ehhif always so erect and rigid, as if only here in this most private place did he dare express in his body any of the stress and pain he felt. Down at the end of the bed, Sheba lay in a tight curl of fur only slightly less white than the coverlet, her tail covering her face.

Rhiow stood quiet in the dimness for a few moments, watching the ehhif’s breathing. It was very shallow. Too shallow. The drugs… But she was sure the Silent Man had listened to the warnings from his doctors about the drugs’ effects… and had taken them no more seriously than absolutely necessary. Most likely he thinks it’d be a happy accident if he simply failed to wake up one morning. Not that he would have arranged such a thing on purpose, of course. For even so short a time as she’d known him, Rhiow thought suicide wouldn’t be his style.

She paced over past the bed to jump up on the sill of the window that looked out on the other side of the house’s front yard. Outside a pallid mist was rising, colorless as everything else was in that hour balanced between night and morning. By human reckoning it was four in the morning, the time when People and ehhif alike were most likely to slip across the boundaries between life and what lay beyond, and sometimes not to come back.

Rhiow sat down on the windowsill, a shadow in the surrounding paleness, and gazed down at the man curled up under the covers, his face half-hidden by them. She didn’t need to go any closer to do what she had in mind, but there was something else keeping her at a distance. Even in his sleep the Silent Man had an aura of unapproachability, the same effect that had kept a clear space of sorts all around him at the party when all the other ehhif had been singlemindedly concentrating on breaking down barriers and injecting themselves into one anothers’ space. Maybe it’s no wonder that he had relatively little trouble getting to grips with us when we appeared, she thought. His mindset has something of the feline about it: the reserve, the self-containment of the good hauissh player who watches and waits….

Rhiow composed herself and concentrated on clarifying to herself what she intended to do here. The one goal she would most have desired was unfortunately not available to her. I can’t save his life… For the Whisperer had told her how this poor ehhif’s story was to end. To save the Silent Man would mean changing history.

And not for the better. It wasn’t just a matter of how he’d lived his life or what he’d done – the great pleasure he’d brought many millions of other ehhif by the stories he’d told. It was his death itself, in these circumstances, that was going to make the difference. Right up until the Silent Man died, so terrifiedof cancer were human people in his time that they wouldn’t even speak of it. “Died after a long illness”, was the usual euphemism – if they used it at all. Or if the illness had even been long. It was the Silent Man’s death and his friend Walter’s refusal to be quiet about it, the angrysurvivor’s stubborn insistence on calling the Silent Man’s death by its right name, that would begin the slow change of how ehhif handled the whole issue of cancer. Thousands would be helped in the near term of time by all the money and publicity that Winchell would bring to bear on the issue, and after that, many millions more would have their lives lengthened or at the very least improved, as the in a culture that had completely changed how it went after this particular human malady.

So this was not a death that could be averted or avoided. But if I can at least spare him some pain on the way… Rhiow thought. That would do. I’ll have a look around, then speak to the cancer and see if it will hear me.

Rhiow closed her eyes and assembled the spell in her mind, then silently started to speak the words. The stillness of the room around her faded down into a silence even more profound as the wizardry began to work and the surrounding space leaned into slow compliance with her will. In the dimness, darkness started to fall all around her, only the Silent Man’s form under the covers remaining distinct and growing more so.

What Rhiow had in mind was something less straightforwardly interventional than what she’d done to Delores’s insides. The wizardry she was working was as much on herself as on the Silent Man, a matter of shifted perceptions. As the room faded around her, the ehhif’s body seemed to grow, but at the same time its structure seemed both to fade and to begin abstracting itself into something more like a schematic than the body’s reality of interconnected tissue, of muscle and bone and lymph. All around Rhiow a scatter of slowly strengthening light was starting to build itself into structures that would express the Silent Man’s internal ecology and all the forces working in it.

The effect would take a while to refine itself to the point where Rhiow could best interact with it. She jumped down off the windowsill– that being almost all that was left of her previous perception of the room – and stepped cautiously into the growing outlay of lines of light that was the way the wizardry was rendering the Silent Man’s body. It had a way to go yet before she got down to the one-Angstrom level that she needed to deal with: such profound shifts in perception levels couldn’t happen instantaneously.

As the wizardry worked, the darkness around Rhiow also began to be lit by flickers of the Silent Man’s own perceptions of the wizardry, filtered through the intervening medium of sleep and caged inside the lines of light. It was an expected side effect of doing such a wizardry while the subject wasn’t fully conscious. The surface of the Silent Man’s mind shivered with the dream, a tremor like that of the dreamer’s closed eyes. But the tremor was a troubled one, and the disruption penetrated down into the slowly building abstract, shaking its fabric and infusing it with alien vistas. It’ll pass, Rhiow thought. Fairly quickly, I hope…

All around Rhiow spread a view of scrubby desert country. Under other circumstances it would have seemed unfamiliar, but here inside the Silent Man’s sleeping self Rhiow had access to his memories, and recognized it as he would have. The dry dun-colored surroundings all scattered with sand and mesquite were part of the empty country south of the Mexican border, all too familiar to the Silent Man after months spent covering the turn-of-the-century border skirmishes between Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders and the outlaw Pancho Villa. There in some nameless, dusty stucco-built village in the depths of Jalisco province, a fair-haired barefoot girl in ragged skirt and blouse stopped in the street to stare at the tall thin stranger, then ahandsome enough young man despite being worn down by the long and violent campaign he’d been covering for the sensation-hungry Hearst papers.

In the dream of long ago, nothing was in the Silent Man’s heart but vague interest in the smart and funny teenager who tried to attach herself to him, dancing and singing in the dusty street to get his attention. Dream-memory quickly flashed forward to the somber nuns he paid to take her into their boarding school and teach her to read and write, andRhiow caught glimpses through his eyes of earnest and laboriously-written letters from the girl that the Silent Man read when he was back in New York after the war. But then the dream flickered forward in time again, and without warning it wasn’t letters he was looking at. Through the Silent Man’s eyes Rhiow glanced up from a red-ringed sandwich plate in some Broadway eatery and saw the street door open. A fair-haired young woman was standing there, dressed to kill in a dark short dress over long, long dancer’s legs. Her eyes searched the place, finding the Silent Man, locking on him as if there was no one else in the room. Meeting her eyes with his own, the Silent Man’s heart constricted with desire and fear. And around him, the men having lunch with the Silent Man turned and stared, and one let out a long low whistle…

The sudden stab of unease derailed the dream, which flinched away into darkness and then into some pale and indistinct scenario bringing with it a different array of uncomfortable sensoria– hard chairs, hospital smells, and an unavoidable anticipation of something awful that was going to happen soon. Rhiow backed away into the darkness around the fringes of the dream, her tail twitching with a Person’s innate unease at being submerged unbidden into another’s emotional life. Asalways there came the initial urge to turn away before something more private and embarrassing rose up to confront her. But Rhiow mastered it. There was always the chance this would happen, she thought. And there’s no better way or time to make this investigation. If there’s a fight coming, we’d best be sure of what condition all the participants are in…

She sat again and waited as the wizardly visualization constructed itself, the broadcast light solidifying and sheeting filmily upwards now, strengthening as it grew in height against the surrounding darkness. Shapes started to form, and the defining light withdrew itself to their edges as they reared up high and straight against the dark. Skyscrapers, Rhiow thought as the cityscape started to assert itself, a crowd of narrow canyons of hard structure with streams of life running alongside them. Why would this have surprised me? For the Silent Man had spent so much of his time in New York, and had become (she’d gathered from Urruah) inextricably associated with it. The question is, which vision does he see as a microcosm of the other?…

The city of the Silent Man’s imaginings was towering up all around Rhiow now, solidifying, going dark except for the spatter of light now scattering itself through the vista in mimicry of windows and streets and headlights. Yet out beyond the edges of the vision, Rhiow knew that the arid landscapes through which the Silent Man had passed and from which he’d originally come still surrounded the city. In this visualization it was both island and oasis, a patch of life in the barrenness that was all the rest of living as far as the Silent Man was concerned. The wilderness haunted his and his body’s memory — like calling to like no matter how much he might deny it. And in the middle of it all, amid the noise and rush of all his fellow ehhif, he lives and moves…and hides. Mining their lives, and hiding his…

Rhiow moved into the vision and let it finish growing up around her. Cabs as yellow as her those of her own time, but a lot heavier and rounder, drove around and past her as she walked down the double yellow line, ghostlike and impervious. The traffic was two-way, and the street was Broadway: what she and the Silent Man would have agreed in thinking of as the better end of Broadway, up in the high Fifties, south of the Park but well north of the rougher parts of town further south on the island. On either side as she went, Rhiow was flanked by bright lights and the neon gleam from restaurants and bars of the past. Away down the road in the direction of what would someday be Times Square, the fierce electric glare of the Great White Way reflected upward between the buildings like a confused and actinic sunrise. There it all lay spread out before Rhiow as she went— the main drag of the Silent Man’s heart, with his lifeblood running up and down it: the seemings of the city’s men and women and children, guys and dolls, mugs and molls, cops and robbers, all hemmed in by the dark facades of the city, the penthouses and the basement tenements.

She passed by the front of Lindy’s, all aglow with light, the inside alive with waiters bustling around, every banquette and counter-stool full. Outside on the corner, surrounded by a menacing crowd of bodyguards, stood what some drift of inner Silent Man-memory told her was a local mobster, doing “business as usual” with any passersby who dared come close. If all this is body-symbolic for him, Rhiow thought as she padded by, and all these buildings and people have inner meaning – then maybe the restaurant is his stomach, and the mobster… what? An ulcer? If she went over and engaged with them, doubtless she’d find out. But right now she had other business, and Rhiow knew where she would find it.

She followed Broadway down through the urbane Fifties, into the more rough-and-ready Forties, and through the bright-lit incandescent canyon that would be Times Square some day. Though the tallest buildings hadn’t been built yet, the core building at One Times Square was there as it had been for the last two decades of the Silent Man’s life, though the famous wraparound news ticker showed nothing but a long string of periods as she passed it by. Though nothing like the multicolored day-in-night lightblast that Rhiow was used to in her own time, the glare was still harsh enough to make a Person squint. The shadows of the ehhif crowding the Square and crossing her path all slid and flickered hard-edged past her. As they pressed in around Rhiow, she looked sidelong at them, for many of those shadows had more in them than just darkness. An old regard was bent on her through them — curious and hostile, but for the moment, passive.

Rhiow flirted her tail in overtly nonchalant acknowledgement of sa’Rraah’s presence and kept on walking through the southern part of the Theatre District, where the glare behind her faded and the shadows in the streets and between the buildings deepened. Passersby grew fewer, and the feel of the streets, for which any Person or ehhif living in the City necessarily acquired some sense, started to grow chilly and uncomfortable. No surprise, Rhiow thought, as Broadway narrowed on either side and the traffic grew sparse. This wasn’t exactly a healthy neighborhood in his day… Where people or groups stood on streetcorners, they looked like they were skulking: dressed in dark coats, hats pulled down, eyes glinting sullenly or narrowed in threat as they turned away from her regard. And down the streets, well away from the streetlights – which started to look pitifully few and feeble – the darkness was pooling above the tarred road surfaces like a thick black smog.

Rhiow stopped in the middle of the intersection she’d just come to and looked around her. Thirty-Third, she thought, glancing westward along the side street. The traffic down here was almost nonexistent. She turned to look up the way she had come, and saw only the dull double sheen of a set of headlights or two as they turned into uptown side streets. Any foot traffic up there was invisible through the darkness piling up between her and the areas where light still dwelt.

It’s how he sees it, Rhiow thought. His body as an island in the dark… and the dark encroaching. She flicked an ear at something she heard in the darkness down Thirty-Third: something scrabbling, a moment’s metallic banging, then silence again.

She knew what would make that kind of noise in her own world, but what it meant to an ehhif she couldn’t be sure. Rats… It was a signal. To go down there… or stay away? She couldn’t discount the possibility that the Silent Man’s unconscious mind might be aware of her intrusion on some level. It’s just a question of whether he’d see it as benign. But having come this far, I don’t think I can allow that to affect what I have in mind…

Rhiow started walking down Thirty-Third. Down that way, in this time as in her own, was Hell’s Kitchen. But in this time the place was much closer to deserving the name: a neighborhood – if that was the right name for a place so un-neighborly – home to gangs and crooks of all kinds, whorehouses and sweatshops, mob-run factories and unsavory bars, gambling dens and dives. It was a place that Rhiow gathered from Urruah that the Silent Man had come in a strange way to love as he devoted so much of his working life to chronicling its ways. But ‘Ruah also said the stories the Silent Man told about the place, for all their dry humor, were dark at the heart. A lot of pain, a lot ofdeath… with always the Shadowed One’s laugh at the end – a co-opted ehhif version of it. And the pain acknowledged… but always, the ehhif trying to make it bearable. So of course what she was looking for would be down there. All that remained was to discover the shape it had taken this time.

As Rhiow headed down Thirty-Third, the sense that someone was watching her got stronger and stronger. Not just one someone: many of them. The fur stood up all down her spine, but she refused to stop and shake it down into place again. She would not give what watched her the satisfaction. Soon enough I’m going to have more to worry about than my fur, Rhiow thought as she made her way down the street, glancing from side to side at the dark buildings, all stained brick and cracked concrete, the unlighted windows. Dirty glass from them lay shattered on the sidewalks. The street, what she could see of it under the layer of pooled smog, was a patchwork of potholes, dug-up places that hadn’t been mended, open manholes from which the covers had been stolen. Here and there a building was missing from the street entirely, reduced to rubble piled up in the lots where they’d stood. On either side of these their neighboring buildings tottered, their adjoining walls pulled away to reveal empty fireplaces, ancient cast-iron radiators hanging in space, wallpaper peeling away and flapping in the cold night’s wind, staircases all open on one side with the stair-treads hanging down into the void. In the rubble that was all that was left between them, dark things shifted and rustled.

Rhiow licked her nose nervously. This was the Silent Man’s body telling her what was happening to it, the destruction of basic infrastructure. But much more was going on. As she kept walking and the street kept darkening, the only light now coming from an ugly bloated red moon setting over the river down at the far end of Thirty-Third, Rhiow started seeing more movement inside the derelict buildings. Inside the dirty windows she could hear things moving. As she went, and that reddish moonlight seemed to get stronger, she started seeing the movements inside them as well. Lumpy shapes in tissue-colors of dark red and spotty dark pink and fat-ivory, rounded, bulbous, glistening a little sometimes – they were getting bolder, pushing themselves right up to the windows, right through the broken places. Eyeless, they nonetheless peered at her, and though faceless, their expressions were mocking as they leered and tittered at her.

Rhiow’s lips wrinkled away from her fangs in distaste. She itched to assemble some minor wizardry that would blast the nasty things away from the windows and put a stop to their snickering. Best wait, though, she thought. No point in wasting energy I might need later… On she went down Thirty-Third, crossing Eighth Avenue and heading for Ninth. Above her, the sky lost the last reflection of city light, went starless. Around her, the structure of the buildings themselves was beginning to shift, and the watching, leering tumor-shapes were no longer just inside them, but starting to appear on the otherwise deserted sidewalks – first just a few, then in groups. By the time she reached the middle of the block between Ninth and Tenth, the edges of the buildings were starting to go unnervingly soft.

By Tenth, the buildings were all built of ehhif tissue– stressed cartilage and bone, perforated organ tissue struggling to repair itself after being attacked again and again by the cancerous cells running wild inside it. But it was not doing well. Everything looked shabby, tattered, inexpressibly weary. And all around her, the tumorous growth insidethe Silent Man was running riot. In the tumbledown ruins of the worst-damaged organ-buildings, individual cells rustled and cheeped and burrowed like rats, undermining, consuming, destroying. Outside, larger clumps and clusters of them, wearing blunt rounded eyeless mockeries of ehhif shapes, were gathered on the sidewalks, staring at Rhiow as she went past. Some weird in-body imagery of the Silent Man’s, Rhiow thought. If he sees his body sometimes in dream or imagination as a city, why wouldn’t he see the cancer as a neighborhood in it? And a bad one. Populated by criminals, by bootleggers and bad seeds. Yet in the Silent Man’s stories, Urruah had insisted, the bad guys often had good buried somewhere at their cores, and were sometimes compelled by circumstance or persuasion to remember it. Working in that idiom, could even cells gone mad for multiplying themselves remember whatit was like to be normal? It’s worth a try —

Rhiow kept going, and the ehhif-shaped tumor clusters and many of their more mobile single-cell“pets” started coming down off the sidewalks and slowly gathering behind her as she went, the crowd rapidly swelling. They weren’t much bigger than Rhiow was — tiny by comparison with real ehhif. But there are so many of them. And they have me seriously outnumbered. If they should decide tocome after me…

That wasn’t a thought to be having right now, here in the heart of what was certainly a candidate to be declared one of the worst “bad neighborhoods” Rhiow had ever been in. Trying to demonstrate a calm she absolutely didn’t feel, Rhiow kept on walking until she came to the middle of the intersection of Thirty-Third and Tenth, pretty much the heart of the worst part of Hell’s Kitchen in that time, all surrounded by crumbling four-story brick apartment buildings and blind-windowed shops that sold nothing. There she sat right down and allowed the crowd that had grown as it followed her down Thirty-Third to gather around her. They had left an uneasy space around her, maybe as long as she was, and Rhiow was glad of it, seeing that the cancer, even in its unthinking way, was uncertain of what she might do or intend.

Rhiow curled her tail around her forepaws and waited for the rustling and the muttering to die down a little. Finally,“I am on errantry,” she said, “and I greet you.”

The silence that followed the Avedictory was deafening, and told Rhiow more than she needed to know about how receptive this audience was going to be to her suggestions. Never mind, just plunge in–”A change is coming to your world,” she said. “It’s going to end.”

“A long, long time from now,” said the multifarous voice of the cancer from all around her. Every one of the ehhif-mimicking clumps and individual cancer cells around her buzzed with it, an unpleasant itchy sound that made Rhiow want to scratch her ears. She restrained herself.

“In terms of your individual lifespans,” Rhiow said, “yes, that’s true. But in terms of your host’s lifespan – a very short time indeed. I’ve come to you on his behalf.”

Rhiow could feel the tumor clumps and cells looking at her as if she was out of her mind, and they were both amused and angry.“Who do you think you are, speaking for the world?” said the voice.

“A friend,” Rhiow said.

Laughter broke out.“Some kind of nut,” said one voice.

“No such thing as a friend in this world,” said another. “Just guys who want something out of you for free.”

“I’m not asking anything of you,” Rhiow said, “except a little forbearance. You remember, perhaps, how it was once, when you were part of a larger whole, and every cell had a place that was made just for it, somewhere that it belonged –”

There was an annoyed buzzing at this.“Listen to that,” said the voice. “Somebody thinks we should know our place.”

“Somebody thinks we should go back to how it used to be,” said another voice. “No chance of that! Now we’re a big deal, now we run things all over the world, now we say what goes!”

“Like it’s our fault how we are or somethin’? We’re how the world made us. How the smoke made us. It made us choose. So we chose!”

Just a flash of bitterness there, but too quickly swallowed up by the wider consensus— the voices of cells who could no longer remember a way of life or an inner metabolism that hadn’t once involved a carcinogen and the irresistible commands it sent. There’s not enough for me to work with there, Rhiow thought, distressed. Better change tack —

“I’m not saying that you personally are at fault for the way things have come to be,” Rhiow said, choosing the words carefully. “And of course anybody can see that you own this place.” That being the problem. Even if a whole team of wizards came in here to try to clean the Silent Man out,all this cancer would need to come back would be one missed cell, and enough time… For she could smell the presence and essential invasiveness of the cancer in the same way that some houiff were able to smell it. This was not the kind of malignancy you could easily talk out of doing what it did, if ever.

“So what’s this stuff about forbearance? You mean we should, like, go away?” More nasty laughter.

“There wouldn’t be much point in me asking that,” Rhiow said, glancing down for a moment to keep her audience from seeing the anger she feared was beginning to show in her eyes. “But for your host’s sake – to lengthen the life of your world, which would surely be a good thing for you – if you could be a little less invasive as regards the nerves – ”

An indignant rustle went through the tumor clumps and cells surrounding her.“Whatchoo talkin’ about?” their voice said, and for just that moment Rhiow had to keep her head down as a spasm of annoyed amusement sparked through her, a memory of Urruah imitating a bad New York gangster-accent he’d picked up from one of his ffihlms. “You’re talkin’ about our communications system, here! You start messing with that, we don’t know where we are any more! If we don’t know where we’ve been, we don’t know where we should be going! Bad enough the world slows down that way over and over, you want to make it worse? Forget about it!”

They don’t like the painkillers, Rhiow thought. Interesting. Is it possible that some ehhif cancers use not just the blood and the lymphatic system for signaling, but the nervous system too? Maybe by some change in the proteins — ? It wouldn’t have surprised her. But there was little time to confer with the Whisperer on the subject at the moment, especially as the crowd around her rustled again, and this time the rustle came with a slight motion toward her.

“We’ve got our own way of doing things here,” said the buzzing voice, more loudly, more angrily. “It’s worked for a long long time. It’s gonna keep working.”

“Of course it will,” Rhiow said. “But it could work even better if you’d consider giving this approach a try.” She glanced around her at the tumor-shapes, putting everything she could into the appeal, even though the appeal was directed at something that wanted nothing more than to reproduce explosively at the cost of the very lifeform that made the explosion possible.

“Don’t need to try anything new,” said one voice. “We’re doin’ what we were built to do.”

“Buzz off, lady,” said a third. “We need those nerves. We’ve got a lot of growing to do here. We need every scrap of this space, everything here.”

“Gotta own it all.”

“You want some turf? Go somewhere else, mess around with somebody else’s. You can’t have ours.”

Rhiow was finding it a lot harder than she’d expected to respond rationally to the tumors and the malignant cells, to do a wizard’s job and retain her equanimity. But that was just the problem here. In this idiom, they were not just clinically malignant, but personally so. They had no intention of listening to her. Though they were Life, to which her final allegiance was sworn, their twisted kind of Life had had all the light sucked out of it. The “bad neighborhood” was intent on swallowing the whole city: it was the final expression of a body angry with the soul that lived in it for a long life of abuse, and now taking its revenge. Yet she had to try. “One last chance,” Rhiow said. “There is always one last chance to make a new choice, to turn away from the old path and make a new one. Remission — ”

The tumor-ehhif and their rat-pets growled, all as one, and shuffled in closer around her. Not good, Rhiow thought, not good at all. Time to go…

Lost, said that fat red moon hanging down over the end of Thirty-Third where it ran into a river of blood. The moon, all blotched with sa’Raahh’s footprints, had swollen to five or six times its normal size; and it was in the Shadowed One’s voice that it spoke now. You’ve lost another one, and through you, so has She. I wonder why you even bother trying any more.

Rhiow refused to listen to that dark Whispering. In the back of her mind was a spell that she’d left ready, a focused jolt of bioelectricity that would recharge quickly from the Silent Man’s own resources. But is it going to be strong enough to handle these things? Rhiow wondered now, for she truly hadn’t thought the cancer would be so aggressive. I might be able to pull more power out of him and into the spell, but can I do it without hurting him?

“Be warned by me,” Rhiow said. “Though your path is ill-chosen, you are yet in some manner my cousins and I must give you fair warning. I will defend –”

They rushed her. Rhiow started to back out but found nowhere to back to: they were behind her, blocking her way out, and the ones coming at her from front and sides reached out to hold her. Well enough, she thought, Rhiow closed her eyes, felt in her mind for the spell, and shouted its last word in the Speech–

In this dimness, it was just as well her eyes were closed, for the flash would have blinded her. Rhiow felt the pressure of the clinging tumor-things fall away. Opening her eyes, she saw that the space around her had opened out a little, and the tumor clusters and mobile cells were shivering and flickering with crackles of afterlight from the discharge. She could feel the spell charging up again in the back of her mind, but Rhiow wasn’t going to wait. She crouched and leaped over the heads of the nearest malignancies –

Something out of the crowd, an oozing loop of tissue, shot up, wrapped around her and yanked her down. A second later Rhiow was down on the ground, half blinded in the sooty fog rising up again from street level. She was quickly weighed down, more and more heavily, as the tumors piled up on top of her. Rhiow struggled, feeling them pushing blobs of tissue at her, probing, poking. The poking got sharper.

Rhiow’s mind flared up in terror, for if she was physically present enough in this scenario to affect these things, they could affect her in turn – and they were looking for a way to implant something of themselves in her –

Not today you don’t!! Instead of resisting the weight of them, she gave in to it – then, in the moment of surprise that followed, Rhiow rolled and lashed out with her claws, slicing, kicking. A high thin shrieking came from somewhere in the pile of wet slobbery tissue that lay atop her: the tumor-creatures closest tried to ooze away. As the pressure lessened, Rhiow managed to roll again, got her feet under her. The spell was ready, recharged. She cried its last word again –

More shrieking as she struggled to her feet and looked for clear space to jump into: but there was none except right around her, and even that space wasn’t as big as it had been before. Either they’ve gotten used to it, or it’s just not strong enough. Rhiow’s whole pelt was shivering with revulsion at the touch of the tumor-things as they came at her again. If I jump another time, the same thing’s going to happen, Rhiow thought as she crouched. No other way out of this. I’ve got to turn up the juice in this spell. I’ll try not to harm him, but —

A sudden new burst of shrieking came from the far edge of the crowd that was around her. The attention of the tumor-creatures turned that way. Rhiow reared up on her hind legs and began slashing at them again, batting at them as if they were unusually large rats, but also peering desperately past them to see what was happening.

Off at the edge of the ugly crowd, she caught side of a shadow, a Person, fighting toward her, small malignancies and large crowding away as it came. For a moment Rhiow thought she was looking at someone’s restatement of legend, for where the Person’s claws should have been there were ferocious cracklings of light like the aftereffect of her own spell. Urrau Lighning-claw?! Rhiow thought, confused by the apparition, yet entirely welcome to have a demigod mix in. But the lightning was understated, as if whoever was coming had understood that any wizardry used had to be carefully tempered in this scenario. Whoever was coming was doing most of the work with his paws, and plainly had a gift for it. The tumor-things were flying from his blows, and though they tried to rush and smother him down as they had Rhiow, they weren’t getting close enough to get a chance.

Rhiow started fighting her way toward the newcomer, and though she might not have been physically as strong as the other, her attackers’ attention was divided now. Shortly there were only three or four layers of the ehhif-like tumor creatures between the two of them, and then just two. Rhiow bashed in the heads of the remaining few that were right before her, and could now see the other Person’s face. Two eyes, not one, she thought a little irrationally. Not Urrua, then. And not Urruah either, for this Person was slenderer, and nearly as black as she was.

Hwaith?!

In the unnatural light he was somehow burning dark, and every claw was out, all glinting far brighter than they should in that ugly red light. He spun where he stood, and all the malignancies around them backed away a little as he slashed at them. Time to go, wouldn’t you say? Hwaith said.

Rhiow glanced around at the crowd pressing in and couldn’t see any other course of action that made sense. Both of us or nothing, she said, making one small vital change to the spell lying in the back of her head.

That would be my plan too. Ready?

Ready!

Hwaith inflated himself to what seemed three times any Person’s right size, and let out a hiss that sounded like an understreet steam-main breaking. The malignancies tumbled over one another to get away. As they did, Rhiow licked her nose nervously – though there was no way around what she had to do — and then cried out the last word of the spell one last time. Light flashed and sizzled blindingly all around them, far brighter than the last two times. The malignancies fell to the ground, twitching.

Rhiow and Hwaith exchanged one quick triumphant glance over the bodies of their enemies. And then Rhiow, looking past Hwaith, realized in shock that not only the malignancies were twitching. So were the buildings all around them.“Uh – ” she said.

Even as she spoke, the nearest one started coming down in an ugly wet slumping-into-the-street that she had no desire to be anywhere near.“Come on!” Rhiow cried, and the two of them leapt over the fallen malignancies, came down again on some of them, jumped again, hissing and spitting in disgust, and fled down the street among the still-twitching bodies of many more.

A few seconds later, that part of Thirty-Third Street was all one puddle of shivering, blood-dark ooze. Behind them as they ran in the direction of Broadway, more of the buildings fell, and still more, in a series of slurping, liquid collapses. The nearer buildings, with more solid material in them, still shook unnervingly but eventually settled. By the time they hit Broadway, and areas representative of parts of the Silent Man that were still undamaged, everything had solidified and stood still and quiet. But that unsettling red moon still stared down Thirty-Third at them, glaring and sullen, like the eye of a Person who has been argued into silence for the moment but intends to come back to the subject later.

Rhiow stood there a moment, looking down the street, and then shook herself all over.“That was completely disgusting, and I need a bath,” she said, aware that she probably sounded pitiful, and for the moment not caring.

“Yes it was,” Hwaith said. “And so do I. So let’s get out of here.”

Rhiow sighed.“But one thing first. We have to stop in Times Square.”

“All right.”

They walked it, not hurrying, seeing the dark city start coming back to life around them, at least in the Silent Man’s dream-image of his inner self: real ehhif walking the streets again, real traffic rolling, traffic lights changing, the brilliance of the glare of the intersection of Broadway and Eighth Avenue reasserting itself. Hwaith just walked by Rhiow, not demanding explanations or doing much of anything but look around at the surroundings and their fellow pedestrians as they went: men in fedoras and pretty women on their arms, others wearing long dark coats and furtive looks, ducking into the stairwells of below-ground apartments or meeting to whisper on streetcorners. The stores began to have lights again, the shadows crept aside out of the street to huddle in their proper places in doorways and side alleys, and finally Rhiow and Hwaith came out into the brilliance of Times Square.

There Rhiow made her way over to the front of One Time Square, still in this time the home of the newspaper. Around it the news ticker showing nothing but periods kept making its placid way. Here, as she reached out with a string-manager’s energy detection senses into the heart of the Silent Man’s city-as-self-image, Rhiow knew she would find the conduits for the strictly pain-sensing aspects of his nervous system. Like much else in the City, they were buried under the road: she could see them there, long bundled lines, glowing with the messages they carried.

“Bear with me a for a second,” Rhiow said to Hwaith, sat down, and closed her eyes. Once settled, she ran her consciousness down into the conduits and tried to make some choices about which ones to affect and which to leave alone. The problem was that the Silent Man’s sensorium as a whole wasextraordinarily interwoven as far as pain was concerned. But then all his life’s been about sensing what’s going on with those around him – rooting out their pain and nailing it down on paper. It’s all wound up with who he is and what he does: channeling that pain…

Nonetheless, for the sake of what he would be doing in company with them over the days to come, Rhiow did what she had to. She spoke the words in the Speech that would reset the Silent Man’s afferent nerves’ sensitivity to pain stimuli to a somewhat lower level. Finishing, she opened her eyes and saw, all around her, the glare of Times Square dimming down. Only the periods on the “zipper” sign kept their brilliance: but the rest of the place gently dulled itself down to something that resembled a brownout. The shadows that had been chased to the edges of things started to creep back.

Rhiow was aware of Hwaith looking at her: but he didn’t say anything. She sighed. “It won’t last,” Rhiow said after a few moments. “He’ll get some relief initially, and he’ll have some more energy to call on as a result. But he’s too much about being a raw nerve, aware of everything all the time, to let it stay this way.”

“He’ll dissolve it himself before you even go, maybe,” Hwaith said, sounding a little sad.

Rhiow flicked one ear“yes”. “In the meantime, we’ve done what we need to,” she said. “Let’s go.” She closed her eyes again.

*

When she reopened them, Rhiow was shocked by how bright everything seemed. But after a few moments’ blinking she realized that the room was in almost exactly the same shade of morning twilight as she’d left it. She had been inside the Silent Man’s other self for no more than twenty minutes.

Over by the door she spied a dark shadow against the room’s light colors: Hwaith. Listen, she said silently, so as not to awaken either the Silent Man or Sheba, how long have you been there?

Since a little after you started, I think.

On guard…

Yes. Until it was obvious I was could make myself more useful elsewhere.

Thank you.

Rhiow jumped down off the windowsill, but came down harder than she’d intended, feeling a little faint. The noise of her landing’s thump made the Silent Man stir a little.

She could have hissed at her own clumsiness, but that would have disturbed the Silent Man and Sheba too. Rhiow staggered a little, found her footing, headed toward the door.

Hwaith put himself halfway through the door and held it in part-immaterial state for her. Rhiow staggered through gladly, made her way back into the living room and sat down hard in the middle of the floor, uncaring who might be there to see her. She sagged, almost woozy, and crouched down on all fours before she fell down.

“Nasty,” Hwaith said after a moment.

“Yes,” Rhiow said. “Yes it was.” She shook her head: her ears were still buzzing with the ugly buzzing tumor-voices.

Then she glanced up. Hwaith had sat down by her and was looking at her with concern.“It’s all right,” she said. “Just the usual exertion. You pay more when you have to construct a wizardry on the fly.” Rhiow shook her head once more at the buzzing. “I just hope I didn’t burn out anything vital with that last flash –”

“I doubt you did,” Hwaith said.

Rhiow laughed helplessly.“The trouble is, it’d be hard to tell whether I destroyed something, he’s already so ripped up inside! Oh, Hwaith, it’s one thing to know that surgery isn’t so far along in this time, but with this poor ehhif, the doctors couldn’t do anything for him but literally go down his throat with a sharpened spoon and cut off the worst bits of the malignant tissue they found, and half the contents of his throat with it! All the rest of what’s killing him is still in there. The cancer’s spread everywhere in him. It’s seeded all through his lungs, it’s in his lymphatic system and getting into his liver and his bones…”

She fell silent.“You should drink something,” Hwaith said after a moment.

“Yes I should,” Rhiow said, and got to her feet. She felt a little better already. “Just the reaction…” she said, and headed over to the water bowl that was set out by the Neverending Buffet.

She put her face down in the water, and the scent of it suddenly made her aware that she was ragingly thirsty. Rhiow drank for almost a minute straight, and with every gulp after a few laps thought sadly of the Silent Man’s throat, of how it now felt like a great gaping bottomless hole to him, a ruined instrument that he had once played like a virtuoso but would now never use again as it had once been used. That’s why he keeps putting all that scalding hot coffee down him, she thought: for she’d noticed with some surprise over the past couple of days how hot the Silent Man drank it. It’s the only way he can feel anything there any more except pain. Or at least it’s a pain he controls. And that’s why he eats with such gusto. He’s convincing himself that this at least is still all right. And it’s not. His gut’s so ruined by the cancer that it’s a question how much good he gets out of his food at all any more. That’s why he’s so thin…

She shook water off her whiskers and sighed, then walked back to where Hwaith sat, feeling a little better. Rhiow sat down by him and washed her face a little.“How did you find me?” she said after a moment.

“Well, you weren’t here, or in the spare bedroom, or up on the windowsill where you usually go, so I –”

She gave him a look.“Hwaith.”

Hwaith flicked an ear at her.“Sorry…” He rubbed at one ear. “I heard you.”

“You heard me from out here? When I was in there??”

“I told you, I have the Ear, a little.”

“Not so little,” Rhiow said, “if you can find me inside an ehhif’s dream of his insides. Especially when they’re that complex…”

Hwaith looked away. There was something so self-effacing and somehow weary about the way he did it that Rhiow had a sudden impulse to go over to him and lick his head a little by way of apology. A second later, she blinked at the concept: sudden impulses of that sort weren’t normally in her repertoire. Especially with someone you’re just getting to know. I’m tired. We’re all tired. And it’s only going to get worse. But he didn’t have to come in after me…

“…You didn’t have to,” Rhiow said.

“Oh, I know. You would have handled them — ”

“Hwaith, I was going to say that it was a good thing you did come in after me,” Rhiow said. “Otherwise…”

He looked up at her again. Rhiow looked at him a little sideways.“I’d probably have gotten out,” she said, “but I wouldn’t be in the great shape I am now.” And she put her whiskers right forward.

The irony wasn’t lost on him. Hwaith’s jaw dropped in a slight smile.

“But thank you,” she said. “And for letting me dump on you, too.”

“Come on… you know you’re more than welcome.”

Rhiow sighed.“It’s just that the rest of my team… They’re in my head so much of the time, Hwaith: it can’t be helped, considering what we do, what we’ve done together. But I can’t let them bear that burden too. I have to handle at least my coping myself. Otherwise we’d never get our jobs done atall.”

Hwaith bumped her with his head: then stood up and turned away toward the buffet dishes, waving his tail.“Might be smart to have a few bites in peace before the crowd starts to arrive,” he said.

“What?”

He looked over his shoulder and flicked an ear at Rhiow again.

“Really,” she said. “Well, I suppose I could eat something…”

Rhiow followed him, thoughtful. And so it was that she’d eaten her fill, and was sitting in the middle of the empty living room washing again, before there was a bang that blew all the curtains in the room awry, and Urruah was standing there glancing around him. “Rhi! Hey, it’s a good thing you’re up. Listen, I –”

Bang! Aufwi was standing off to one side, looking around him.“Rhiow? Oh, you’re here too, Urruah? That’s handy, because –”

Bang! Siffha’h and Arhu were standing side by side and back to back in the middle of the room, Sif looking satisfied, Arhu looking unusually grim. “Rhi,” and “Rhiow,” they said more or less in unison. “Just wait till you hear what we found out, those ehhif are going to…”

They fell silent, seeing that Rhiow wasn’t looking at them, but at Hwaith, sitting next to her. He flicked one ear back and forth, gazed up at the ceiling: then looked back at Rhiow.

BANG! On the sofa by the window, Helen Walks Softly– with her hair down and wearing a very fetching long blue satin bathrobe — was sitting with her legs curled underneath her and a cup and saucer in her lap. She looked around at the assembled People and smiled the wan smile of an ehhif who hasn’t had a lot of sleep. “And here I thought I might be showing up too early,” she said.

“Not at all,” Rhiow said. She glanced at her team. “So why don’t you all have some breakfast and tell me what you’ve found, and we’ll start working out what to do next…”

The Big Meow: Chapter Nine

Naturally matters were never going to go as smoothly as that. Some members of the team insisted on debriefing while they were still eating, in defiance of the etiquette of most People: and Rhiow wasn’t surprised when Urruah turned out to be the worst offender in this regard. He’d hardly had as much as half of one of the bowls of food laid out by the patio before stopping to look over his shoulder at Helen Walks Slowly, who sat finishing her coffee while the others ate. “Look at you,” he said. “Where did you den last night?”

Siffha’h and Arhu paused in their eating just long enough to throw a look of disbelief and resignation at Urruah and each other. Helen just smiled. “Freddie put me up in a room at the Beverly Hills Hotel.”

“All by yourself?”

Helen laughed at his attempt at a casual tone.“What are we going to do with you?” she said. “Do you ever think about anything but sex?”

“Food, sometimes,” Urruah said.

Helen burst out laughing, put the cup down on a nearby coffee table and lounged back on the sofa.“You missed your calling, cousin. Or maybe your time. Here you’d fit in perfectly as a gossip columnist.” She stretched, then pulled her legs up under her again and started massaging her feet, making a face. “Heels! … but it looks like when I’m doing things for my cover story, I’m going to be wearing them most of the time.” She gave Urruah an amused look. “Freddie and I were up until late down by the pool at the hotel, sorting out what our contractual relationship was going to be and hammering out a plan of action for dealing with the studios. All in plain sight, but not where anyone could hear: the only other people down there were the late bar staff, and though they tried ever so hard, they couldn’t hear a word we were saying. Funny about that.” She waggled her eyebrows.

Rhiow lashed her tail in amazement.“Queen among us, is there nowhere in this place where everybody’s not out to discover everyone else’s secrets?”

Helen shook her head.“I’m sure the hotel staff don’t make so much that they mind augmenting their income by passing hot tips about the stars to those two proto-media ladies,” she said. “Anyway, we didn’t finish our discussion until, oh, it must have been three-thirty or four… and then Freddie said, ‘No point in putting you on the road so late.’ Which was considerate of him. Though I think he also doesn’t mind knowing exactly where to find me in a hurry this morning if he needs my help in sorting something out with Paramount.” Helen glanced over at Hwaith. “In aid of that, after the front desk dug this up for me –” and she lifted a little of the robe’s satin skirt, dropped it– “I followed your lead and had a word with the hotel switchboard. The things it’s heard in its time: my stars, my stars!” Her smile went wicked. “Anyway, we had a lovely chat, and after I did a little wizardly enabling, it agreed to forward any incoming calls to my cellphone. If anyone calls the room, I can gate right out of here and be back there in a hurry.” She stretched her legs out again. “Satisfied?”

“I was just curious,” Urruah said.

Helen raised her eyebrows.“You’re a Person. What else is new? …But after that mob scene last night, maybe you have reason to ask.” She smiled that feral smile again. “Anyway, if the phone rings, I’ll need to take it. Freddie says we’re going to have a very busy day today. We’ll see about that, though, as my film career definitely takes a back seat to what we’re working on.” She glanced around. “Speaking of back seats: where’s our host?”

“He had a late night too,” Rhiow said. “And maybe a little excitement that he wouldn’t have been expecting. Nothing next to yours, though, I’d say….”

Rhiow was trying to sound casual about it, but she was no more successful at this than Urruah had been. Now he looked up from the bowl again, and Rhiow knew she was in trouble: anything that could make Urruah stop eating was going to be problematic.“What happened?”

Arhu and Siffha’h still had their heads down in the bowls, but now Aufwi had stopped eating and was looking at her too. Hwaith began washing one ear. “Maybe this can wait until everyone finishes –”

“Rhiow,” Urruah said.

It wasn’t a tone she heard from him often. So she had no choice but to tell him what she had been up to, and how and where Hwaith had found her.

Various shocked looks were exchanged among her team while she was getting through the tale. Rhiow did her best to ignore them. Finally Urruah, who had sat quiet by the food bowl during the whole recital, gave her an annoyed look and said,“Did you think to ask any of us along on this little jaunt??”

Rhiow sighed.“Ruah, everyone was out, and the moment presented itself, and I took that moment. Like you’ve never misjudged a wizardry in your life. Do I have to remind you again about the Oyster Bar incident?”

Urruah’s tail twitched. “All right,” he said. “Point taken.”

“And that didn’t even involve anyone else’s quality-of-life issues – so keep your sense of proportion about you.”

“Yes, O Queen.”

Sarcasm, Rhiow thought: that’s better. “All right. Does anyone else care to take me to task for my night’s work? Last chance.”

Arhu and Siffha’h looked away from each other and began examining the ceiling. Aufwi washed his face. Helen started braiding her hair.

“Fine,” Rhiow said. “So, you two. About Dolores and Ray – “

“A boring night,” Arhu said.

“All this ehhif moaning and boning and rolling around,” Siffha’h said, rolling her eyes. “Urruah, you’d have loved it.”

Urruah put his ears back.

“But finally they finished up with that and our tom started working again on convincing his weak-minded little queen that he knew what was best for her,” Arhu said. “I’m sorry, Rhi, don’t look at me like that, but this one was not bred for brains, whatever else she might be good for. Otherwise she’d see that all this tom wants her for is her sshi’fth.”

It was slang again, and Rhiow once more started feeling grateful that she didn’t understand some of what the kits were saying. “Or maybe something else,” said Siffha’h.

“Such as?” Aufwi said.

Sif was bristling a little.“I don’t know,” she said. “But when they were talking after they finished, she kept trying to get him to discuss what life would be like for the two of them after she got her career running again…”

“And he didn’t want to talk about that very much,” Arhu said. “It wasn’t like he was avoiding the subject on purpose. It was more like he didn’t believe it was ever going to happen. Like something impossible. I Looked at him — ” Arhu’s tail lashed. “And whatever I could get fromhis images of his future life – which were pretty murky except for pictures of having lots of things – one thing’s for sure: she wasn’t there.”

Siffha’h gave him a look. “So when they started doing it again — ”

“I got bored and I left,” Arhu said, in the tone of voice of someone telling on himself so another party wouldn’t have the pleasure of doing it first. “And what I found!”

“What?” Urruah said. “Where’d you go?”

“Back to the house where all the ehhif were partying.”

“Why in the Queen’s name?”

“Because that’s where their meeting is tonight,” Siffha’h said. “They’re going somewhere more important after that, but he wouldn’t say where. Wouldn’t even think about it.”

“Really,” Hwaith said.

“And because Ray was thinking about that house all the time, even in the middle of the most physical stuff,” Arhu said. “And about the little guy.”

“Who,” Helen said, “Elwin Dagenham?”

“Him,” Arhu said. “As if he’s really important somehow.”

“Indeed,” Rhiow thought. Suddenly her thoughts about the party’s host were falling into many new shapes, some of them most unusual.

“But not important in the public relations sense,” said Aufwi.

“Absolutely not. In Ray’s mind, he’s this big dark shape. Dangerous.”

Rhiow’s tail twitched slowly. It was hard to imagine the inoffensive, almost shy figure she’d seen last night as any kind of dangerous. “And you couldn’t See why.”

Arhu sighed.“Not then,” he said. “He was way too full of ehhif sex-think for me to See anything else right then. Which is why I left.”

Rhiow caught the set of growing annoyance in Siffha’h’s ears. “It was wise of you to stay behind,” she said. “Thanks for that.”

Sif’s ears went forward. “So you went back to the house–” Rhiow said.

“They were plenty of them still partying,” Arhu said. “So I just got sidled and walked around poking my nose into things. I wanted to see if I could figure out where the group was going after they met.”

“Are you absolutely sure you weren’t noticed?”

“Of course I wasn’t,” Arhu said. “The ones that weren’t trying to get into each other’s clothes were mostly busy wrapping themselves around as much alcohol as they could find. And not just alcohol, either.”

Helen looked alert.“Drugs?”

“Just hhash,” Arhu said. “There was a little room back in the wing of the building that runs along the hillside. The inside was furnished sort of the same way as the library we saw: and it had a fireplace. Everyone was gathered around that and blowing their smoke into it.”

“Smart enough, I guess,” Urruah said. “That way any smell would vent out up the chimney rather than out into the hallway.”

“Not that one of us couldn’t smell it,” Arhu said. “That’s what brought me down there first. But then I thought, ‘Who knows, maybe the ehhif who owns this place has some other little secrets stashed down here as well.” And sure enough, down that hall a little way is a doorway that looks just like more wall paneling until you Look at it really hard.”

“Show us,” Rhiow said.

A blink later they were no longer in the Silent Man’s living room, but looking at the wall paneling in the hallway of Elwin Dagenham’s house. To the normal visual sense, there was no break in the expensive hardwood paneling at all. But Rhiow and the others now saw what Arhu had seen when he bent the Eye on the paneling. A faint fizz of power described a door-shape in the wood, hiding the actual razor-thin space between door and jamb.

“Wizardry,” Aufwi said, looking shocked.

“Too underpowered,” said Helen, peering at it through Arhu’s eyes. “It’s a charm.”

Auwfi looked confused.“You haven’t run into this kind of thing before?” Helen said. “Granted, you don’t see these a whole lot in urbanized societies. There are some Speech-words for simple things, like the states of visibility or cohesion, that are so powerful they don’t need to be built into a spell by a wizard to work: you can attach them to some physical object and get a fairly good result, though it’s usually pretty low-powered. Even nonwizardly humans can use charms – if they can find the word they need, and learn how to tether it to the right kind of object. People in rural cultures, or lifestyles with strong verbal transmission traditions – and a lot of superstition – tend to hang onto them longest.”

Rhiow’s fur stood up a little. That someone in that house would have the knowledge to use such a thing, combined with what they already knew about the place, disturbed her. “Anyway, as soon as I saw that,” Arhu said, “I went in – “

With him they slipped through the wood of the door as Rhiow had done with the Silent Man’s door that morning. Here was another room like the library and the smoking room, but this one was windowless. More wood paneling lined the walls, there was thick dark red carpeting, and two big comfortable chairs stood in the near corners of the room. The far end of it was dominated by a desk on which lay several very large manila folders.

The viewpoint changed abruptly as Arhu leapt up onto the desk to look more closely at what it held.“You didn’t open them, did you – “ Urruah said.

Arhu hissed in adolescent annoyance.“Why would I need to?” he said. He Looked down at the bigger of the two folders on the desk.

From his point of view, its cover simply melted away, leaving Arhu looking at the top page of the contents. The page was covered with fuzzy black markings that it took Rhiow a moment to recognize as rubbings of some kind. This page had been laid down on some carved surface and rubbed with some soft dark substance, leaving a positive print.

Rhiow squinted at them a little. The designs that covered the page were almost all squarish, each one a little different from the others. There were strong-featured ehhif faces adorned with feathery headdresses, as well as birds and animals crammed into the square shapes: even a few that were feline– big-cat faces, perhaps pumas. All the rest of the designs on the top rubbing were round shapes, intricately carved with smaller designs she had trouble making out. “These are all from the central part of this continent, aren’t they?” Rhiow said. “The part that’s south of here.”

“Mayan,” Helen said immediately, leaning forward to look at them more closely. “Yet with some Azteca features. Strange: those two cultures were pretty clearly separated from one another in time – it’s odd to see the symbologies combined. Arhu?”

“The next one?” he said. Arhu’s view shifted to the page underneath the first. It was similar to the one on top: densely packed symbols, pretty clearly transferred to the paper. But there were spots on this sheet where the images underneath hadn’t transferred correctly to the rubbings. “Some missing stuff here…” Aufwi said.

Rhiow was looking narrowly at the images, waiting to see what the the Whisperer would make of them. In her mind they slowly gained context.“Numbers,” she said. “This is… some kind of calendar?”

“Not so much that,” Arhu said, “as a date book… I think. A schedule for things to happen.”

“Or of when things are supposed to happen,” Siffha’h said.

“They were great ones for calendars,” said Helen, “both of those peoples. But seeing their two writings together like this – “ She shook her head. “Next page?”

Arhu’s view of the contents of the folder shifted, shifted again. There was another page of pictures-that-were-dates, just a list of them as far as Rhiow could tell. Here, too, there were some gaps in the data. Rhiow blinked as she looked at them, for she kept getting the impression that other nearbycharacters were moving a little, trying to squirm out of their own boundaries and squeeze their way into the gaps. “It’s strange,” she said. “Is anyone else seeing these moving?”

Though she couldn’t see him while looking through Arhu’s Eye, Rhiow could feel Urruah tilting his head to one side, gazing at the page. “I am,” he said, “and I don’t like it.”

There was no question in Rhiow’s mind that there was something faintly unwholesome about the way the images on the pages were behaving. “And it’s worse,” Hwaith said, “because just when you think you’ve caught them doing it, that they’re actually about to slide over into the next gap, that then they hold still.”

“Like they know you’re watching,” Auwfi said under his breath.

“The next page?” Rhiow said.

The view shifted. The second-to-last rubbing in the folder was not of more of the squarish ideographs. It was a single image that was so tangled that Rhiow at first had trouble sorting out what was going on in it. But finally she could make out two figures. One was a gigantic serpent with wings, wearing a peculiar headdress. It was wrapped around another similarly adorned animal figure that struggled and slashed with huge taloned paws. Its ears were small and rounded, the muzzle blunt and wrinkled, exposing terrible fangs: behind it a long sinuous tail lashed in rage.

This time all the fur on Rhiow’s back that hadn’t stood up on sight of the charm-effect finished the job. “Now here,” Rhiow said softly, “I think we’re on familiar ground.”

“It looks like this was from a different source than the first few pages,” Helen said. She peered at the image. “Maybe from a later period than the first few. But the Feathered Serpent is known all through the Mesoamerican cultures. Kukulcan, Quetzalcoatl, the Nine-Wind God: he has so many names.”

“One of the Powers that Be — ” Aufwi said.

“That’s right,” Helen said. “He’s a cognate of the one that Western tradition calls the Michael Power, and the One’s Champion – though as usual the correspondence isn’t exact. There are legends all through the Mesoamerican lands of how he lived for a while in one or another of the civilizations, teaching the ehhif the arts of peace. But he attracted the Lone Power’s enmity under one of Its many names – Texcatlipoca maybe is the best known. So rather than enter into a battle that would destroy the surrounding civilizations, the Serpent moved on and made his home elsewhere. That was how he came to the Mayans, the story says, after leaving the Toltec lands.” She shook her head. “In the old stories, the Serpent never stays long — just for enough time to bring his gifts to mortals and make sure they’ve mastered them. After that he’s always on the move, always eager to get back to the homeland of the Gods. He doesn’t fight unless he’s forced to it, because in this particular manifestation he’s too powerful. An all-out battle could have destroyed everything he was trying to save.”

“Well, he has another name in our time,” Rhiow said. “And I have a feeling we may need to introduce you. But that’ll wait for the moment. The Serpent’s enemy– That’s one of our bigger cousins, surely.”

“A jaguar,” Helen said, looking more closely at the rubbing. “Normally there would be spots in the drawing, but there aren’t, which can mean a couple of things.” She sounded uneasy. “But the headdress makes the identification easier. It’s a god called Tepeyollotl.”

Suddenly everyone was exchanging glances.“There’s a name we’ve heard recently…” Rhiow said.

“From the Lady in Black?” Helen said. “Yes. I remember the epithets she was attaching to the name. The Devourer of Worlds…” She shook her head. “But they’re not the usual descriptions attached to the Black Leopard. Originally Tepeyollotl was the personification of the Dark at the Heart of the Mountains. He ruled caves and deep places, and the Mayan eighth hour of night, when they felt that darkness had completely fallen.” Helen paused, swallowed. “But most importantly, he was the lord of echoes and earthquakes.”

That last word brought everyone’s heads up. “Earthquakes…” Aufwi said.

“Yes,” Rhiow said, her fur rising again at the memory of that awful moment in the tree. “There do seem to be a lot of those going around, don’t there…”

“What’s the problem with the lack of spots?” Urruah said.

“It suggests that this image wasn’t of the everyday version of Tepeyollotl,” Helen said. “Earthquakes have their place in the natural order, and the ancient peoples knew that. But they also understood that it wasn’t past the abilities of the Lone Power to cause them when It had reason. The dark pelt would mean that this is also an avatar of Tezcatlipoca, of the Mesoamerican version of the Lone Power: the Lord of the Smoking Mirror.” She rubbed her face. “But he has other names that were supposed to belong to a power even above him: an older one. Ilhuicahua Tlalticpaque, the One who wants to own Heaven and Earth: and Chalchihuihtotolin, the Master of the Sorceries from Outside.”

“Meaning outside our universe,” said Rhiow, feeling as distressed as the Whisperer had earlier sounded.

Once again here was the issue that Hwaith had originally brought to them– slightly better defined, but with no sense of where they were supposed to look for a solution. For a wizard on the One’s and the Powers’ business, there was a tendency to consider Them the rulers or managers of pretty much everything in the known universe-bundle, and the Lone Power the mainsource of trouble. But it was rare for one’s business to require a wizard to deal with issues that reached outside the Powers’ sheaf of universes, or were sourced outside them.

“Arhu,” Helen said, “were there any more pages in that folder?”

“That’s all I saw,” he said.

“All right,” Rhiow said. “Let the Eye go for now…”

The room came back.

“So first we have the poor soulsplit Lady in Black,” said Urruah after a moment, “with her talk of her friend the Devourer shredding up whole universes, ours very much included. And now a concrete connection between her and the group that’s meeting and doing Iau knows what at Dagenham’s… but something that’s helping her nasty universe-devouring friend: very likely at the very least a string of serial killings. Those are bad enough, but what they’re up to is going to destroy their entire world. Are these vhai’d ehhif completely out of their minds??”

It was almost a yowl. Everyone froze in place for a second, and Rhiow threw a glance at the Silent Man’s bedroom door, half expecting him to emerge and demand to know what the problem was. But nothing happened.

“Sorry,” Urruah said then, and tucked himself down against the floor. His tail was still twice its normal thickness. “I don’t know about everybody else, but I am finding this… disturbing.”

Helen sat back on the sofa and started unbraiding the hair she’s braided earlier. “You wouldn’t be alone,” she said. “But let’s take this piece by piece. Somebody in that house – probably Dagenham – has been studying these images hard enough to want to keep copies where he can get at them easily.”

“That’s causing about half of my freak,” Urruah said. “The ehhif in these particular cultures were big on spilling blood, weren’t they? Lots of it.”

“Not at the beginning of their histories,” Helen said. “But they got that way.”

“That being the connection, you’re thinking, to the serial killings,” Aufwi said to Urruah.

“And at the same time,” said Hwaith, “somebody in that house… maybe Dagenham… has been dabbling in charms.”

Everyone was quiet for a few seconds, considering what this new complication might mean.“What’s bothering me,” Helen said, “is that information that we might need is missing from those pages.”

“The gaps…” Aufwi said.

“We need to see the tablets or whatever that those rubbings were taken from,” Helen said. “If there are just gaps in the originals, we need to know that. But there may be remnants of data that didn’t transfer properly.” She looked thoughtfully at Arhu. “We’re going to have to find outwhere the original carvings are.”

“Unfortunately there’s no way to tell that by just looking,” Urruah said. “One of the only weaknesses of using the Eye for research…”

Arhu bristled a little.“Calm down,” Urruah said. “I just mean that we’re going to have to go physically touch those documents to find out where they came from.”

“That’s a project for a little later,” Rhiow said. “Helen, you said the two peoples who did this writing were apart from each other in time – “

“The Mayans abandoned their cities in the ninth century,” Helen said. “The Aztecatl, the People from Aztlan as they called themselves, dominated the Mexican region later – the fifteenth, sixteenth centuries as modern Western ehhif culture reckons it. But they started a great migration from the south, so Azteca legends say, a hundred years after the Mayans vanished.”

“Strange, then, to find the two sets of characters together. We need to sit down and clarify what they mean, what relationship they have to one another – “

So abruptly that the noise made everyone in the room jump, a brassy she-ehhif’s voice burst out singing: “There’s no business… like show business… like no business I know – “

“Sorry, sorry!” Helen said as everyone, particularly Hwaith, stared at her. “That’s my room – “ She pulled her phone out of her bathrobe pocket, and the singing stopped. “Hello? Yes, good morning! No, not at all. – Well, this wouldn’t be the best moment. An hour from now would be better.” She glanced over at Rhiow: Rhiow waved her tail in assent. “…Yes, I needed to sleep in this morning a little, I don’t normally do such late nights! Not at parties, anyway.” That wicked smile popped out again, as if she was imagining the effect of the last line on whoever was on the other end of the phone. “…Really? That’s a lovely thought. Well, assuming they’re willing to back it up with some nice numbers in the contract. …Yes, that would be fine. …How about in the lobby? Perfect. In an hour, then. Thanks so much! Goodbye…”

Helen hung up.“I’m sorry,” Hwaith said, staring at the phone, “but that’s… unusual.”

“There are moments in our time when we wish it was unusual,” Rhiow said. “Enjoy the relative telephonic peace and quiet of your era while it lasts.”

“Paramount and MGM have been after Freddie already this morning,” Helen said. “I have two meetings before lunch… after which I’ll have some leisure to pump him, so very casually, for more information about Dagenham.”

“That sounds fine to me,” Rhiow said. “But the other thing that’s bothering me now is that Arhu found a charm working in that house this morning when we missed it last night. Assuming we did miss it.”

“I would have smelled anything like that a mile away,” Siffha’h said, and now it was her turn to bristle. “It’s something new.”

“Sif, please,” Rhiow said. “It’s just that its presence changes the context a little. An ehhif might stumble onto the mechanics of a charm by itself. But it also might have been given such a thing to use by a wizard.”

Everyone stared, particularly Aufwi.“What kind of wizard would–”

“An overshadowed one,” Arhu said with a growl.

Rhiow waved her tail in agreement.“We might be about to find ourselves dealing with something of the sort,” she said. “Which is why I want to make sure we’re careful about covering our own tracks when we go back there: leaving no traces of wizardry that we can’t avoid. And let’s take the idea a little further. That weird spot you found in the library…” She glanced at Hwaith and Urruah. “Cousins, could what we were seeing there not have been just some old remnant of a gate’s casual presence? Could it have been a portal that was purposely emplaced there by a wizard with minimal gate management experience, then later purposely removed again — and then someone attempted to cover up that it had ever been there at all?”

“Hence the weird way the residue looked,” Urruah said. His tail was lashing. “Could be. I wasn’t thinking that way at the time–” His tail lashed harder. “And you know what? I’m an idiot. I want another look at that right now –”

“Ruah –”

“Saash would have seen that right away –”

Rhiow reached up and cuffed him upside the nearest ear, though with the claws in.“Maybe she would, but she’s not here to ask. You are!” she said. “And I’m betting you’d have thought of that yourself pretty soon. So stop chastising yourself! And we’ll all go have a look… but not right this second.” She waited a few moments for Urruah to settle down again.

“So this list of dates,” Hwaith said. “If this is somebody’s appointment calendar we’re looking at – “

“I suspect it is,” Helen said, “though thinking about the kind of appointments that may be involved frankly gives me the creeps.” She pulled her phone out, put it on silent, and pocketed it again. “We need to decipher the dates and see what they point to. The Dark Lady seemed to be hinting at something that was supposed to happen soon, and my money says the dates on those pages are going to be germane.”

“’Ruah will work on it,” Rhiow said. “He’s best at working with ehhif symbology.”

“The Whisperer will be able to guide you in regards to how the Mayan and Azteca calendars were structured,” Helen said. “But just so you know: one way they organized dates was to group them in thirteen-day segments called trecena, and Tepeyollotl ruled one of those in particular. It was mazatl, the time of hunting one’s prey. If you see any references to that — ”

“Noted,” Urruah said. “I’ll see what I find.”

“You know a lot about this,” Siffha’h said.

Helen smiled.“I came late to my heritage,” she said, “but I made up for lost time when I got there. Meanwhile…” She stretched. “I’d better go get my meetings dealt with, and see what I can find out about Mr. Dagenham along the way. Where shall we meet later?”

“Back here makes most sense,” Rhiow said.

Off to one side a door opened, and a moment later Sheba and the Silent Man came through it. Sheba waved her tail in greeting at everyone and headed for the food dishes, but the Silent Man paused in the doorway, looking around at everybody a little oddly.

Did I hear music out here? Someone singing? It wasn’t the radio, either.

“I’m sorry,” Rhiow said, “yes, you did. That was Helen’s phone.”

Her phone. He looked at Helen. You have a telephone that you carry around?

She smiled and held it out to him. The Silent Man took it, turned it over in his hands, shook his head.“It’s fairly common where we come from,” she said.

And they can all play music like that?

“They can do all kinds of sounds,” Helen said.

The Silent Man raised his eyebrows. Amazing, he said, handing Helen back the phone. Merman just premiered in that show on Broadway. I thought it might have some staying power—

“You’d be right,” Urruah said. “That song pretty much became the national anthem of Hollywood.”

The Silent Man nodded, then turned toward Rhiow and gave her a strange look. I had some weird dreams last night, he said, looking from her to Hwaith.

“I can understand that you might have,” Rhiow said. “How are you feeling?”

He looked thoughtful. Better than usual. You had something to do with that, did you?

“I did,” Rhiow said. “I’m sorry to have interfered.”

The Silent Man stretched experimentally, then grinned– a most unusual expression to see on him, for there was no emotion associated with it besides pure pleasure. Blackie, he said, you interfere as much as you want.

Rhiow bowed her head to him, while wondering when and how she would be able to tell him what she’d found and what she had not been able to do. Meanwhile, he said, what’s our order of business for today?

‘Our,’ Urruah said silently to Rhiow. I like this ehhif more and more. Though I also keep getting more scared for him…

“I’ll fill you in, cousin,” Hwaith said.

“But in short, we’ll be going back to Dagenham’s this evening,” Urruah said. “There’s dirty work going on up there, and we’re going to get to the bottom of it.”

The Silent Man nodded. I have some business to take care of today. In the meantime, my house is your house… and when you’re ready to move, let me know how I can help.

He headed back toward the kitchen, probably to start the first of the endless pots of coffee, and Hwaith went with him.“Cousins, I’m away,” Helen said. “Call me if you need me. I’ll be back after lunch with whatever news I can find.”

“Dai,” the People in the room said to her. Helen vanished.

“Let’s finish eating and be about our business,” Rhiow said. “Aufwi, I was going to ask you about the gate – “

“It’s acting up again,” he said, sounding almost resigned. “It jumped a quarter mile from its last location… and maybe with reason. Did you feel the little earthquake this morning?”

Rhiow shivered.“No. And maybe that troubles me more than feeling it would have. The thought that I might actually get used to such a thing — !” She licked her nose. “No matter – you and Hwaith and I should go look at it, since ‘Ruah is going to be busy with the data Arhu brought back.”

“What about us?” Siffha’h and Arhu said in ragged unison.

Rhiow spent a few moments considering her options before she answered… but they were limited. “Back to Dagenham’s,” she said. “But not both of you. Sif, your power levels make you stand out too much, and I’m starting to feel paranoid about our comings and goings there attracting too much attention…especially when we have to return tonight. And besides,I have something for which I’ll need you here. Arhu, go back to that room, get in touch with those documents and find out where they originated – then come straight back. And while you’re there, do me a favor. Refrain from the Eye at all costs.”

He stared at her.“Why? Why shouldn’t I – “

“I don’t know,” Rhiow said. “No one whispered it to me, if that’s what you’re asking. I simply have a feeling that it’d be wise for you to avoid using it any further today.”

Arhu looked at her oddly, and Rhiow prayed briefly that he wasn’t going to start up another of his trademark power struggles. But, “All right,” he said after a moment, and without any further ado he strolled out through the French doors and vanished.

“You’re thinking that if an overshadowed wizard is somehow involved with these ehhif who’re meeting secretly at Dagenham’s,” Urruah said, “that he or she might pick up on Arhu – “

Rhiow flicked an ear and wandered over to the French doors, looking out into the back yard.“Best to be safe,” she said. “There was no wizard there last night, I’m certain. A mind that uses the Speech regularly leaves an impress on its surroundings that lasts a little while: we didn’t note anything of the kind. And we’d have picked up on any use of wizardry around us at the party that wasn’t to do with our own group. But if that person plans to be there tonight – who knows, they might be ready to stop in early to prepare something for the evening.” Rhiow glanced up at the sky, rapidly lightening into dawn. “The earlier Arhu gets in there and out again with the information we need, the happier I’ll be.”

She turned away from the window.“Now,” she said. “Siffha’h.”

Sif sat down, her ears erect. She looked a little unnerved, for Rhiow didn’t often call her by her whole name.

Rhiow sat down with her.“There’s likely to be trouble tonight, but not just at Dagenham’s or wherever. After we finish our business, whether in that house or elsewhere, we may have to escape in a hurry: and the spot we escape to will undoubtedly be noticed. Aufwi’s gone off to check on the gate again, but in a while I’m going to consult with him and Hwaith about where else we might securely and secretly den up for a short time. But for the time being, we have to protect the Silent Man and Sheba and the other People who come here. We need to set in a barrier that won’t need further attention, that won’tbe immediately obvious even to a wizard looking for it, and that will hold even if we’re under attack or have to escape uptime. You know what powering that kind of spell is going to take.”

Siffha’h licked her nose. “Lifeslice,” she said. “A few weeks’ worth of my life, at least.”

“Are you willing?”

“Are you kidding? I can do it upside down with my feet in the air.”

“I’m not asking how easily you could do it,” Rhiow said. “You know that paying the price can’t be deferred if you’re going to be returning uptime soon, which all of us will be. You’ll have to start paying it here and now, and it’ll decrease your power for the remainder of whatever time we spend back here. If you’re willing to make this expenditure, I need you to consult with the Whisperer and start structuring the spell immediately. You’ll need to leave it part-built in your mind and then finish and execute it when the situation demands. How about it?”

“I can do it,” Siffha’h said. “I’ll start now.”

“You are a queen among queens,” Rhiow said, and licked the kit’s ear. “Let me know when you’re done and I’ll look the structure over.”

Siffha’h headed off toward one of the spare rooms down the hall from the Silent Man’s bedroom. Rhiow glanced over at Urruah. “Shall we step out for a few minutes?”

They slipped outside into the back yard, where a few of the local felines were already starting to show up for the morning buffet. Rhiow and Urruah greeted them, then headed off into the shrubbery nearest the wall.

“Leaving no unnecessary traces of wizardry behind us, you said.” Urruah gave her a look as he sat down on the pine needles that had fallen under the shrubs on that side. “What exactly are you thinking?”

Rhiow tucked herself down on the needles and breathed in the clean dry scent for a few moments.“Well. If Arhu was right – and there’s another wizard involved in this, one who’s overshadowed – “

“We wouldn’t want them to catch sight of us and know we were in play.”

Rhiow had to drop her jaw a little.“It’s always hauissh with you, isn’t it.”

“What else is life,” Urruah said grandly, “but the Game?”

She gave him an ironic look.“Well, surely sex must fit into that worldview somewhere for you.”

Urruah put his whiskers forward.“But you told me to stop discussing the Sex-As-Hauissh paradigm, oh, moons ago now.”

There is no way I can win this, Rhiow thought.“Anyway, yes, I prefer that we stay well out of sight as long as we can. I’m just starting to fear now that we’ve already been seen and lost that advantage. I wish we’d detected that charm sooner.”

“If it wasn’t there, there’s nothing we could have done differently,” Urruah said. “And if it was there, then either it was very subtly done – which warns us of the caliber of opposition we’re dealing with – or it was very underpowered: which suggests that the charm might have been incorrectly built by someone who didn’t understand what they were doing, or ill-handled by someone who was badly instructed.” He paused to wash down the back of his shoulder for a moment, and then gazed off into space. “Either situation might be diagnostic. In any case, I want to look at the thing myself, and I also want to get out there and have another look at that former gate emplacement – if that’s in fact what it is.” Then he looked over at Rhiow again. “But somehow I think that’s not all of what you’re worried about.”

Rhiow’s tail was twitching, and not just at his perceptiveness. “’Ruah,” she said, “if this is the Game, then we’re playing it far deeper than any wizard has before. Deeper than maybe even the Powers have – otherwise why would the Whisperer’s fur be as ruffled as it is? We’re dealing with things from outside the normal physical and spiritual order of our worlds. The Lone One is trouble enough. But at least She’s our trouble. Who knows how power is constituted outside the One’s sheaf of universes? What goes on in other sheaves? Who rules them? Are they even ruled? Is there wizardry there? If so, how does it work?” She shivered. “And can ours compete?”

Urruah’s tail too was twitching now. “You’re thinking we might find ourselves up against some other sheaf’s version of a wizard,” he said. “Or worse: some other sheaf’s version of a Power.”

Rhiow flicked an ear in agreement.“Not a prospect I’m excited about, I assure you! But being prepared is half the battle. If someone contaminated by another continuum’s version of wizardry, or some Power from outside, is working here – then just knowing that’s what’s going on gives us an advantage of sorts. If they expect us to have been taken completely by surprise, then that’s an advantage they’ve lost. It’s hauissh all right, my kit! And we’re caught in the game of our lives.”

“Of everyone’s lives,” Urruah said softly. “Everywhere.”

“So we’d best play hard,” Rhiow said. “Here more than usual, knowledge will be power. We need to know everything that the other players here know – and more than they know. And in a hurry!” Her tail lashed. “Arhu is going to get more of a workout than he’s going to like. And we’regoing to catch grief from Siffha’h because of it. Can’t be helped…”

Urruah sighed.“So here we are having to break new ground one more time,” he said. “You’d think that maybe by now some ehhif wizards somewhere might have run up against something similar, and taken a little of the edge off the problem…”

Rhiow had to laugh at him.“’Ruah, as if we’re not perfectly capable of handling what errands the Powers send us without having ehhif help us out! That’s not a sentiment I’d expect to hear from you.”

Urruah gave her a dry look.“But Rhi,” he said, “it still brings up the question. Why us? Why now? Why haven’t other wizards in our worlds had this problem before?”

“I’m not sure they haven’t,” Rhiow said. “We have to find out if they have, and fast. If this has ever come up before, we have to find out what was done to stop it. I imagine that the other side, whoever they were, believe the data to have been lost. Perhaps it has. Time…” She sighed.“It’s such a solvent. Even wizardly knowledge isn’t proof against it. News gets forgotten, the Speech itself loses recensions, worlds are lost and words get worn down…” She paused to wash a paw and try to calm herself a little. “But regardless, for the moment we have to assume that we’re where we are, and when we are, for the usual reasons: because we’re the best tools the Powers have for the job.”

“Oh,” Urruah said. “No pressure, then…”

Rhiow got up enough to take a swipe at his ear, missing on purpose.“Go on back in there and eat some more breakfast,” she said. “I have to make a call.”

*

Arhu was back in less than half an hour. When Rhiow came back inside after all too brief a time spent meditating and handling necessary physical matters, she found Arhu sitting by himself in the middle of the living room floor, using some of the Silent Man’s spare typing paper to make hard copies of the images he’d Seen earlier. “Well?” she said.

Arhu didn’t answer for a moment. On the piece of paper in front of him, a set of the squarish Mayan characters were forming to cover the paper, with the exception of some of those troublesome gaps. When the figures had darkened down fully, he opened his eyes and started panting a little. A few seconds later he looked up at Rhiow. “There were a couple more pages in the folder when I went this time,” Arhu said.

“Interesting,” Rhiow said. “Someone in that house was looking at them last night, or this morning – perhaps in some other room?”

“I think in another room,” Arhu said, glancing around him at the various pieces of paper. “But the originals don’t like where they are very much; it’s like they’re trying not to notice what they’re used for or who’s looking at them. The house makes them nervous. They really prefer thinking about the past than dealing at all with the present…”

Rhiow’s tail twitched as she thought about that. Inanimate objects couldn’t always be depended on to give one data in much depth, but when they were afraid, it was worth noticing. “Did they know where they came from?”

“Absolutely,” Arhu said. “A museum. I could see their pictures of it.”

“You didn’t use – “

“No I did not use the Eye!” Arhu hissed. And then he quieted down and looked a little concerned. “Not that I would have felt real happy about using it, or staying there very much longer, even if you hadn’t said anything. I was starting to wonder if something was watching me. After just a little while I wanted to get out.” He paused to scratch behind one ear, then looked over at the empty desk. “Where’s our ehhif gone?”

“He’s having a shower,” Hwaith said, wandering in from the kitchen. “So where was this museum?”

“Here,” Arhu said, and put a paw down on a piece of paper that was still blank. It quickly filled with a map of central Los Angeles, and a spot where, within a square of roads, various smaller streets curved toward a meeting-place at the square’s heart. The curves were in marked contrast to the severity of the angles and smaller squares made by the streets all around.

“That’s the Museum of History, Science and Art,” Hwaith said. “It’s down in Exposition Park, where the big rose garden is.”

“You know your way around there?” Rhiow said.

“Fairly well,” Hwaith said. “Errantry occasionally takes me down that way. Getting in won’t be a problem.”

“Let’s go, then,” Rhiow said. It was as if the Whisperer was leaning over her shoulder, looking intently at the map, and bristling with a barely-managed fear that something might not happen in time.

“I’ll do a transit circle out in the back,” Hwaith said. “Give me a moment.” He went out to take care of it.

Rhiow glanced back at Arhu, who was once more looking over the images on the paper. His ears were laid back.“What’s the matter?” she said.

His eyes met hers, and the look in them was genuinely distressed: a reaction he hadn’t been willing to display while Hwaith was there. “Rhi,” he said. “There really was something looking… watching. It felt like what was leaning against the timeslide when we gated in.”

Rhiow hissed softly.“Sa’Rraah….”

“No!” Arhu said. “Not Her. I know what She feels like by now!” His fur didn’t rouse, but Rhiow thought that was only because he was absolutely commanding it to lie still, as a tom not of his pride was in the area and he didn’t want his reaction to show. “She always wants to make you look stupid,” Arhu said. “I mean, She wants you dead too — but the Lone One mostly wants you to think that you were an idiot to even try to fight Her: that She was always going to win. It’s personal, with Her. This, though – “ He turned away from Rhiow as he got up and with a small wizardry swept the papers into a neat pile. “This just wants you dead.”

Rhiow wasn’t sure what to say.

“But we’re the answer, aren’t we?” Arhu said, vanishing the papers into an otherspace pocket. “Iau and the Powers wouldn’t have sent us back here if we weren’t supposed to fix this. If we didn’t have at least a chance.”

Rhiow waved her tail in quiet agreement.“That’s how Urruah and I are seeing it at the moment,” she said.

Arhu hissed as Rhiow had: a small personal sound of frustration and nervousness.“That’s what I thought,” he said. “But I hate this.” His eyes met hers again. “Is it wrong to hate this?”

Rhiow sighed.“Not at all, my kit,” she said. “As long as while we hate it, we just keep on doing what we have to.”

She headed for the doors, trying to look calm for him, and Arhu followed.

*

The museum was surprisingly beautiful for something buried so deep in the heart of a busy ehhif city, and both the building and its surroundings had a spaciousness and grace about them that Rhiow found it possibly to enjoy even in these unnerving circumstances. Down in this part of the city, well away from the hills, there was still some mist clinging in the wake of dawn— though it seemed unlikely to Rhiow that this would last long. From the mist rose a building that featured a big central dome between two smaller ones, and an arched and pillared porch that looked down into the aisles and graveled paths of the huge surrounding rose gardens. The mist softened thetraffic noises drifting in from all sides as the surrounding city surged to life in the brightening morning.

They all sidled before they made their way through the mist and up the steps of the front entrance.“The place doesn’t open for a few hours yet,” Hwaith said. “It should be nice and quiet for us.”

They spoke the Mason’s Word and passed through the bronze-bound doors under the porch, into the huge airy space under the rotunda of the central dome. Had there been any sound, it would have echoed: but the silence here was total, the outside traffic sounds sealed completely away.

Rhiow and Urruah and Arhu paused there on the shining marble floor while Hwaith got his bearings.“Right,” he said. “The last time I was here, all the Mesoamerican stuff was one floor up. The stairs are over here –“

He led them over to the right, where a stairway came down between the lesser right-hand dome and the main one and switched back to follow the circle of the building up and around to the level over the front entrance. There they passed through an arch in the outer wall into a long hall that ran along the front of the building.

Inside it was an unbroken stretch of glass cases on the dome side, and more cases between the windows that looked down on the main entrance. To Rhiow, the sense of profound age that suddenly descended on her as she glanced around was astonishing. It’s strange, she thought, that I don’t get this feeling when we have reason to go to the museums in the City in our hometime. But possibly I’m just getting jaded about those, having seen them so often.

Or maybe it was just the difference in the kinds of things that were here, the more intimate scale of the displays— not the massive statuary of ehhif tombs and effigies, and their bulky-graceful take on the way People saw the Powers that Be, but instead a lavish collection of the things ancient ehhif in a very different part of the world had used in their day to day lives in this part of the world. There were incense burners and effigies of ehhif and beasts, and all kinds of pots and ceramic baskets and three-or four-footed drinking and eating vessels, some of them in animal shapes or looking like human heads. There was delicate jewelry of silver and turquoise and carved translucent shell, and massive pieces – necklets and gold-bound collars in carved jade and polished stone. There were rows and rows of small round-featured ehhif figures made of clay or other baked ceramics, some simply dressed and some ornately; some still painted after centuries, some worn down by time to the red-brown of theoriginal clay. And off to one side stood a great wall of glass, behind which, on many shelves, stood row after row of tablets that had once been square or rectangular or round, but were now well worn by time into less regular shapes.

“This is it!” Arhu said, sounding excited. “I can feel it. This is where the original rubbings came from – “ He started down the long wall of glass, pausing to look carefully at each group of tablets.

Urruah strolled along in tandem with him, looking over the artifacts on the other side.“I never get tired of how old all these things feel,” Hwaith said to Rhiow as the two of them brought up the rear, watching watched Arhu work his way down the line of cases. “It’s not as if ehhif have been here that much longer than People have – they haven’t, of course.” He looked around him, waving his tail gently. “Maybe it’s just that slight sense of alienness… that there’s this other species sharing the planet with us, and their lives are so complex in so many ways that we’ll never really have time to understand. You might go out on the High Road and meet other species that are physically so different, so strange. But ehhif just seem stranger far because they’re right here alongside us, and we just don’t know them…”

Then he trailed off.“I’m sorry,” Hwaith said. “That must sound awfully facile. Or shallow. You’re in close company with ehhif, you said. The situation probably looks a lot different to you…”

“Oh, no,” Rhiow said. She might feel distracted right now by her concern and unease, but Hwaith’s thought was one that had occurred to her more than once. “In fact, if you ever get really close to one,” she said, “it feels more true, not less. At least that’s been my experience.”

“I wonder what it would be like, sometimes,” Hwaith said. “To be someone’s ‘pet’, to let them build that relationship around you. It must be strange to try to balance something as vital as a Person’s independence against the emotional needs of someone from another species…”

Rhiow laughed just a little sadly, thinking of Hhuha.— For the first time in, dear Iau, it’s days now. I’ve been far too busy this last little while… “It’s nowhere near so clinical,” she said. “What does seem strange at first is to find yourself becoming friends with someone you can’t even talk to. Though if things go well, after a while it starts to seem like the most natural thing in the world…”

“Rhiow!” Arhu said. “Look down here!”

“What?” She trotted down to him, and Hwaith followed. “Is it one of the carvings with the gaps?”

“No,” Arhu said. Just briefly, his voice sounded as if he’d found something funny. Rhiow came up behind him, and alongside Urruah she peered into the case. On its bottommost shelf was a tall fired-clay tablet with some of its paint intact though it was more than five hundred years old. It featured an image in the Mayan style of something that could have been mistaken for a crocodile standing on its hind legs. But the “crocodile’s” muzzle was unusually heavy and blunt and short, and its hind legs were much heavier than any croc’s, and its front legs far too short and delicate. Inaddition, no crocodile ever had teeth like the ones drawn in this creature’s jaws: and crocs didn’t normally come patched in yellow and red. They didn’t normally have wings, either, or wear collars ornamented with little cats’ heads.

“That must have given the archaeologists and translators a fun time,” Urruah said, as amused as Arhu. “Let’s see who they think he is —” He peered at the label mounted on the floor of the enclosure. “’Atypical Feathered Serpent motif, Teotihaucan region circa 1500, with ocelocoatl features. Possibly represents the K’iche Maya deity Q’uq’umatz, Creator, Patron of Civilization and Devourer of Darkness.’”

“More like Auto’matz the Devourer of Pastrami,” Arhu muttered, smiling.

“A colleague of ours back uptime,” Rhiow said to Hwaith, who was possibly understandably looking a little bewildered. “A surprisingly senior colleague for someone so new at the job, too. He’s Arhu’s big brother.”

Hwaith gave Rhiow a look that suggested he thought he was having his tail pulled. Rhiow had to chuckle.“It’s a long story…”

“Looks like the locals knew Ith way back when,” Urruah said to Arhu. “Or rather, they know what he’s become since you and Ith started rewriting thte Great Serpent’s story…”

Arhu moved on to the next case.“Here,” he said. “Here’s one that we have a copy of.” He paused in front of a fired clay tablet that had been broken into a number of pieces and carefully mended. Some of the gaps in the rubbing were not merely places where the characters were missing, but where they’d been actively obliterated by some ehhif with a sharp object. In other spots two or three of them were missing because the tablet itself had been broken there, and the material between either pulverized or otherwise lost.

“Okay,” Arhu said, and reared up on his hind legs to pat the glass with one paw. It went misty and indistinct, responding to yet another variant of the Mason’s Word that he’d apparently had ready. Arhu reared back on his hindquarters a little, then jumped up straight through the glass and into the case. He put a paw on the tablet and started talking quietly to it in the Speech. “It must have been awful to be hurt like that, after somebody went to all that trouble to make you. And then getting all busted up! Remember how it was when you were brand new and all in one piece? I’ll help you remember – “

Every wizard has a working style, and once more Rhiow found herself appreciating Arhu’s. What he might lack in structural sophistication when constructing a spell, he more than made up for in youthful enthusiasm and a kind of raw empathy that came across as very touching. It was no wonder that the tablet responded almost immediately. The resin binder that the museum’s restorershad used to replace the worst gaps in the tablet started fading out of sight, replaced by a clay-colored light that started settling gently into the gaps like water with silt in it. The memory of clay fired a thousand years past began rebuilding itself in the actual material: the tablet’s edges sharpened, the shapes of the carvings crisped all across the surface. Finally the effect began trembling in the pits and depressions where characters had been obliterated –

There was resistance. Arhu had stopped speaking out loud, now, and was using the Speech silently, impressing his desire on the tablet. It took more time than the general restoration had, but at last those final characters started filling themselves in. Arhu was breathing hard by the time the work was finished and the tablet sat whole and new-looking in the case.

As she and the others moved in for a closer look, though, Rhiow noticed that the reconstituted symbols seemed to be jittering a little in their places, as if they were having trouble staying restored.“Arhu,” she said —

“Yeah, I see it,” Arhu said, his voice sounding a little strained. “Whoever dug them out really wanted them gone. But I’ve copied this image to the paperwork in case the restitution gives way.”

“Nice technique there,” Hwaith said to Arhu. “Do you know which of these is next? I’ll get it ready for you.”

“Sure,” Arhu said. “It’s that one.” He indicated the first tablet, a round one, on a shelf in the next case. “And that one underneath it, next shelf down.”

“Right.”

Arhu looked back to the tablet he’d just restored. “Rhi, I really think this this is going to need a little of the Eye– “

“Do as much as you can without it,” Rhiow said.

He flicked an ear in agreement, and narrowed his eyes to see the tablet better. For some moments, though, he didn’t say anything, and Rhiow started to worry. “They’re not in some kind of code, are they?” she said, concerned. Normally for codes to be made intelligible to a wizard, at least the cultural context for them had to still be available in some living mind, or recorded in the general knowledge base of some living culture. But if it isn’t –

“No, nothing like that,” Arhu said after a moment. “It’s complicated. But the Whisperer’s helping me. These people’s calendars were really accurate, but so weird in terms of how they divided the months and stuff! They had everything from those thirteen-day cycles Helen mentioned to onesthat went on for two hundred sixty days… and then much longer ones based on Venus’s orbit and Iau knows what else.” His tail twitched idly as he worked out what he was looking at. “But there’s one really long sequence called the Long Count… and this stuff has to do with that. There wereshorter cycles buried in it: hundreds of years instead of hundreds of days or months. And the dates make sense now that the missing stuff’s in place.”

Arhu paused, studying the tablet.“So what we’ve got here are three sets of dates. There are these three long recurring cycles – one that’s three hundred ninety-four years, that’s a b’ak’tun, and one that’s fifty-four, and one that’s eleven. And there are three short cycles of days or months, and three that are very short, just hours or minutes. At very long intervals, all nine cycles coincide. Looks like someone way back when made a list of when the cycles were scheduled to intersect next…”

Urruah looked over at Rhiow.“The Lady in Black did mention ‘three times three times three’…”

She waved her tail at him in agreement. Arhu meanwhile sat there squinting at the characters for a few seconds more, while his off ear flicked again a couple of times as if someone was whispering in it.“Getting it now,” he said. “The years don’t just have numbers, but animal names. All of these are Years of the Black Jaguar.”

The fur stood up all over Rhiow.

“You don’t seem to get a whole lot of those,” Arhu said, laying a paw on one or another symbol to get a clearer reading. “But when you do get a Great Coincidence, it comes in a double pair with another one that’s fairly close: then they don’t repeat again for a good while. The places onthe tablet where somebody came in and chipped out the characters – that’s the last time the cycles coincided.” His far ear flickered again as the Whisperer said something in it. “The way ehhif reckon time, the first coincidence started on June twelfth, nine thirty-one A.D. and ran through till that June fourteenth. Then there was another one that ran from April fifth, nine ninety-four A.D. until April seventh–“

“And the time after that?” Urruah said, his voice completely steady and unconcerned.

Arhu peered at it.“From July twenty-first to July twenty-third, nineteen forty-six…”

Rhiow gulped. From last night until tomorrow night…

“And the rest of that pair is June seventh and June ninth – “

“Of this year,” Urruah said almost inaudibly. “Our this year, uptime.”

“Yeah,” Arhu said… and only then realized what he’d said, and licked his nose several times in rapid succession.

The terror took Rhiow by the throat and squeezed. We’re too late, she thought. Whatever’s going to happen has already started happening! Yet she forced herself to calm down, for there was no proof that they were too late. In fact, the Powers prefer to intervene at the last minute. It gives the Lone One less warning of what They’re about to do,and less chance to find a defense…

“All right,” Rhiow said, working to keep her voice under control. “The question now becomes one of what exactly is supposed to happen.”

“These are ready for you,” Hwaith said from inside the next case.

Arhu paced past the tablets in the case where he’d been working and jumped across into the next one as Hwaith stepped back to make room for him. “Thanks,” he said, looking at the next tablet, which though square had a circular design in the middle and various other pictographs and signs in the corners. “Yeah, this is about the Coincidence too. ‘In this time and only this time may the Dark One become the Shadow of the great and deadly Silence that comes from outside all that is, the Devourer of Worlds: and the greater makes the lesser Its own for that time.” Arhu turned his head to follow the symbols around the curve of the circle. “Yet only by beings within the world may this identity come to be so forged, when they shed blood in rivers, denying their kinship with their own kind, willingly driving out life for death’s and power’s sake.” Now he was standing with his head practically upside down. “Then at such a time if such beings so seek their freedom as to bring about the fulfillment of their desires at the utmost price, they shall have their will, and pay that price; for even the God of gods, in wisdom or folly, has not denied them this freedom, either to preserve their worlds or destroy them…”

Arhu straightened up, and spent a moment wiggling his head around to try to get a kink out of it.“Anything more on that one?” Urruah said.

“No,” Arhu said, jumping down to the second tablet that Hwaith had reconstructed. “Those are just decorations.”

“Good,” Urruah said. He sounded terribly calm, but Rhiow could feel him managing himself as rigorously as she was doing. The last thing either of them dared to do right now was upset Arhu and possibly interfere with his ability to read clearly what he was seeing. “Got that copied too?”

“Did that first thing,” Arhu said. He now sat down in front of the third tablet, which was densely packed with the squarish pictographs, written very small.

“Wow,” he said after a moment.

Hwaith gave him a look.“Wow?”

Arhu’s tail twitched back and forth as he tried to work out what he was looking at. “Whoever wrote this didn’t believe in putting things in order,” he said. And his face wrinkled a little in distaste, like that of a Person smelling something bad. “It’s all scrambled up. The first part is something about ‘The Dark Rift’. And something comes out of it, and it’s really angry. ‘For long has it been confined in the dark, and kept from its home.’And then there’s stuff about blood, too much blood being shed…”

“I hear a theme starting to develop,” Rhiow said, not at all happy about it, and still working to keep her reaction from interfering with Arhu’s work.

Arhu was silent for a moment, his tail stil twitching.“After that it mentions the stars a few times,” he said, sounding confused. “The stars coming out. But ‘after the devouring, the stars are dark…’ Then there are some more date references: to our own time – that last set of dates. And something about the Jaguar again. ‘In the Black Jaguar’s mouth’ – that’s the dark rift again — ‘the Serpent shall be seen, and again they shall struggle. But the struggle shall not go again as it has.’”

The Serpent again, Urruah said privately to Rhiow. Are you starting to think that someone who’s not here really ought to be along on this party?

I was thinking that this morning, Rhiow said. Wait a little–

“Then,” Arhu said, “it says – “ And he stopped. “Rhi, I’ve been really good so far… but this thing’s resisting me. I have to use the Eye.”

“You’ve done brilliantly to get so much out of these as you have without it,” Rhiow said. “Go ahead.”

He leaned close to the tablet and held quite still for a few moments. Rhiow held her breath. Around them all the feel of the room altered subtly as Arhu’s vision of the tablet briefly superseded theirs. Everything else went shadowy compared to the ancient carved designs, which grew deep with uncomfortable meaning. “Now comes the Roar that bursts the earth and lets in the bitter seas, that breaks the dark and frees its dwellers to do battle with the light…”

They could see it as Arhu did– the vast shattering crash of inimical power that waited to wash across the planet, to set the crust cracking and the outraged oceans rushing into new beds as magma broke up through the old ones. The Earth tore itself apart in growing darkness, the sun vanishing in an atmosphere full of the dustand ash thrown up from the broken surface and the thousands of volcanic eruptions along the fragmenting continental plates. Soon there was no light anywhere but the smothering fire breaking up from the planet’s outraged mantle. Then even that faded.The reek of death filled heaven and earth as alllife that had not already died in fire or water now began to do so in ice and darkness…

And it would not stop there, of course. The destruction would spread unimaginably far, the outflooding darkness killing every living world and smothering the stars.“Yet if the Roar is not heard,” Arhu said, as everything went dark, “then shall life be spared until the day, and the hour of the day, shall come again, and life shall again be offered the choice to live or to die forever…”

…and the Earth turned bright again under the sun, unharmed, placid.

The vision faded. Arhu took his paws away from the tablet, shaking his head, and paused to catch his breath. The others looked at each other, unnerved.“Boy,” Urruah said, “you’d really rather be somewhere else when Tepeyollotl lets out with that big meow.”

“But the runup to these events has happened at least once,” Rhiow said. “And the world’s still here. Why?”

“Something must have averted the worst of it,” Hwaith said.

“But that doesn’t mean that there weren’t still serious effects. Remember when Helen said the Mayans abandoned their cities?”

“The tenth century…” Urruah said, and licked his nose. The suggestion fit the dates too well.

Rhiow shivered all over.“We’re going to have to make sense of this as quickly as we can,” she said. In the case, Arhu was making his way down two cases to one of the remaining objects from which rubbings had been made. It was neither clay nor ceramic, but a plain smooth slab, maybe an ehhif foot wide and two feet long, of carved white jade. Temporarily restored to its pristine condition by Hwaith’s wizardry, it was extremely beautiful, even in its mended state. But it had been most comprehensively broken – shattered into six large pieces and numerous smaller fragments.

“Somebody,” Hwaith said, looking up at it, “meant for any reader to understand that this was important. In that culture, gold was all over the place… but jade was precious.”

Urruah was looking at it with great interest.“Yeah,” he said. “This isn’t just someone’s ‘keep off the grass’ sign. What I’d like to know, though, is why someone tried to hard to destroy it. Anyway — Arhu?”

“Yeah,” Arhu said, and sat down in front of the slab, once again bracing himself against it with his forepaws as he Looked at it.

If the last tablet had immediately been eloquent of utmost disaster when viewed with the Eye, this one was less instantly forthcoming– yet it also had a disquieting feel to it, as if it held hidden some secret that might be even more difficult to deal with than a universe’s destruction. “It says the Rift is the key,” Arhu said. “Xibalba Be, the Black Rift, the Dark Mouth…” Rhiow’s vision, like Arhu’s, filled with the image of a huge irregular band of darkness stretching across the otherwise bright streak of the Galaxy.

The Rift grew, or grew closer: it was hard to tell which. But it’s not frightening, Rhiow thought, bemused. Why isn’t this as upsetting as what we just saw? “But then,” Arhu said, “it skips. It says, ‘The old suns will be eaten. The dark and the light will merge and both be destroyed.’ And a little further on, ‘Call upon the Destroyer, do not forget Its name. It will betray – ‘”

He stopped.“Betray what?” Urruah said.

“I don’t know,” Arhu said. “Don’t you see it? I’m losing it. I can’t See – “

Rhiow shivered. For that short time they had all been able to feel with Arhu the equivocal meaning that trembled in the very structure of the stone. But now it was fading, the hidden message of the carving and draining away even while they watched, untl the piece of white jade was just a stone again, carved with strange signs, beautiful but mute.

“I don’t understand it,” Rhiow said, looking up at the tablets. “Why is the context so troublesome all of a sudden — ?”

It’s being interfered with, the Whisperer said.

Rhiow blinked. The thought of the kind of power that could interfere with the functioning of wizardry itself, the very basic use of the Speech to make the normally unintelligible intelligible– But this is the problem. We’re dealing with powers and forces from outside.

“It’s a good thing you did as much as you did without the Eye,” Urruah said. “If you’d used it to start with, we wouldn’t have anything like as much to work with as we have now.”

“Yeah,” Arhu said. But he sounded dispirited as he sat down again, and Rhiow knew what he was thinking without having to overhear it. This was the most important piece, the key to stopping what’s trying to happen — What can be done?? Rhiow said to the Whisperer.

Here and now, that voice said, nothing.

Rhiow held still and considered. Then perhaps we need to look elsewhere for answers than here or now.

The Whisperer paused… and Rhiow felt the other’s whiskers go forward.

“I think we need to do an end run,” she said. “And I’m not going to let myself get too desperate about the Devourer of Worlds until I have a talk with the Devourer of Darkness.”

The others stared at her.

Or Pastrami, said the large calm voice inside all their heads.

*

“Ith!” Arhu shouted, and sat up straight.

Rhiow’s tail waved in satisfaction and relief that Ith had been able to follow the proceedings after she had alerted him earlier. And the connection was surprisingly strong for one reaching so far uptime, and without a specific wizardry having been built to conduct it. “Cousin,” Rhiow said, “we have business in hand here, but it’s being hindered.”

I know, he said.

Hwaith’s ears twitched. “How?”

What my brother sees, I also see. They could all feel through the connection the scratching and rubbing together of saurian claws, Ith’s typical gesture when he was concerned about something. And today I see that I can be of help.

“Indeed you can,” Rhiow said. “Having seen what your brother was looking at – “

I will go to that place in our time and complete what has been begun. And I hear your concern, he said privately to Rhiow; indeed I share it. Forgive my brevity. I will go about this business now, and call you before you depart for your errand tonight.

“Ith,” Rhiow said, “you’re a star.”

She could feel that distant jaw drop in one of the gestures that felines and saurian shared. So it would seem, Ith said, and dropped out of the link.

Arhu came down out of the case and stood looking around him for a moment.“Rhi,” he said, “I’m sorry…”

“You have nothing to be sorry for!” she said. “You did brilliantly. Come on… let’s head out. We need to get back to the Silent Man’s and get some rest before this evening.”

“Though we might,” Hwaith said, “if you liked, stop and smell the roses…”

She chuckled, glanced at the others.“Please,” Urruah said. “I have to confess, the smog has been getting to me a little.”

They headed down the marble stairs and out through that high arched portico once more, wandering down the gravel walks and inhaling air strongly scented with something besides internal combustion. White roses, red ones, gold ones and pink ones, fat rosebushes and thin plants with showy single blossoms, heavy scents and sharp light ones, they were all there.

But there was all too little time to enjoy them. Rhiow was sitting by a white rosebush with huge lemony-smelling flowers when Ith spoke in her ear again: and the sound of alarm in his voice brought her up on her feet in a second. Rhiow, we have a problem.

What?

I have gone to the museum: to the very place I saw with the rest of you. And then to all other parts of it.

Oh, Ith, don’t tell me –

The tablets have not been here for many years. They’re gone…

The Big Meow: Chapter Ten

“Is there any trace – “ Rhiow said.

I can certainly feel their shadows here, Ith said. But after so much time, those are so faint as to be almost impossible to read. I can feel the tablets being wrapped and crated up, and then taken away. But to where…. Rhiow could feel his claws clicking together. Discovering that will take longer.

“This is all wrong,” Arhu muttered, sounding stricken. “Why can’t I See where they went?”

Rhiow licked her nose, intent on not letting her growing exasperation show.“Arhu, take a breath and try to let some of the tension go – “

“Why should I not be tense? We needed what was on that last tablet, it’s really important, I know it is!”

“You should try to stay calm because you’re not going to be able to See your own tail otherwise!” Rhiow said. “You should know by now that vision’s at its least effective when the seer is giving in to stress and trying to pressure the view into happening. Even visionaries with years and years of experience have trouble with — ”

“At this rate I’m not gonna have a chance to acquire years and years of experience,” Arhu hissed, “because we are all going to be dead real soon. In fact we’re going to die before any of us were even born, and I don’t know about the rest of you, but I find that really frustrating!!”

My brother, Ith said, that estimation seems premature, since both of us still exist: and as I would not be here if not for you–

“Oh no you don’t,” Arhu said. “Don’t start with the big cheerful take on the time paradox stuff, because I understand it as well as you do, and the principle of temporal linearity means that – “

Among other things, Ith said, sounding a little dry now, it means I must now become very busy finding the tablets by other means. And from here on in I dare not dip into your timestream too often for the sake of giving you progress reports. Doing so might denature the local timestream enough to make it impossible to reach you when I do discover something useful. Or it might so alert our old enemy to our business that even more attention is brought to bear on you. And there seems to have been enough of that as it is…

“Ith,” Rhiow said, “your caution’s commendable. But we need something more concrete to work with within a few hours than the hints and riddles we’ve got so far. Otherwise we won’t have time to prepare a response by the time Dagenham’s group meets this evening–“

I hear you, Ith said. I will contact you as soon as I have something worth breaking silence for. Dai–

His end of the connection went silent.

Rhiow was unable to restrain herself from letting out a hiss of frustration. Arhu, meanwhile, had begun swearing under his breath again.“ – don’t care, I’m going to get back in there and stare at that thing for as long as it takes until I See what we came here for! And if sa’Rraah Herself shows up and tries to give me grief, She can just –”

Oh, Queen Iau, no more of this right now! Rhiow thought, and stood up to turn around and clout him until he saw a little sense. But to her great surprise Hwaith slipped past her and the increasingly concerned-looking Aufwi, moved gently over to Arhu’s side, whipped one forepaw up and hooked its foreclaw right into the soft middle of Arhu’s ear.

Arhu broke off, his mouth hanging open as he stared at Hwaith in shock, but he wisely didn’t move otherwise: that claw was well set in place to go deep if he so much as twitched. “Listen, young tom,” Hwaith said. “You have to watch what you ask for in circumstances like this. Right now I’m more than happy to answer you on sa’Rraah’s behalf and tell you that this claw righthere is what she’s waiting to stick into every wizard who gets careless or foolish about how they work with others in the Art, especially when everyone’s under pressure. If your team leader is telling you to get a grip and be quiet, then that’s what you need to be doing.”

Arhu didn’t move a whisker even to narrow his eyes, as that would have meant moving his ears… an experiment he looked unwilling to try. All the same, when he spoke, his voice was just a whisker away from a yowl. “You think you know so much?” Arhu said. “You may think you’re a big deal gate tech in this day and age, but you’re not so hot that you didn’t have to come yelling to us uptime for help. And here or there, you are not the boss of me – “

“In the normal flow of events, actually I am,” Hwaith said, “since I’ve been a wizard a lot longer than you have, and the Powers expect you to defer to my judgment when there’s good reason, and to treat me with due respect. But since you’re not paying your team leader the respect she’s due either, then let’s move a tail’s width outside the normal management structure, shall we? Let’s see if you’re willing to move that pretty little not-yet-shredded ear of yours far enough to get loose and find out who’s really the boss of who.”

Arhu’s tail lashed furiously, but he didn’t move otherwise, and kept his mouth shut. “So then,” Hwaith said, and unhooked the claw –

Arhu lashed out at Hwaith fast with a forepaw. But this swept through air which Hwaith was simply no longer occupying, and from the formerly empty air behind Arhu both of Hwaith’s paws shot out and dealt him a one-two slap that left Arhu flat on the gravel of the garden path. He rolled and came right side up in a hurry, crouching down with his ears now well flattened back out of harm’s way, his tail wagging with fury like that of some demented houiff. Then he leapt atHwaith, every claw bared. But once again Hwaith was no longer occupying the same volume of space when Arhu arrived there. The youngster sailed straight through it, coming down hard on the path, and when he tried to turn and spring again, once more Hwaith silently appeared behind Arhu, reared up andknocked him flat.

Arhu rolled and came up crouching again, panting a little now— but this time he didn’t move, just glared. Hwaith sat down in front of him, quite casually, and cocked his head a little, waiting to see what Arhu would do.

Rhiow blinked, astounded by the suddenness of what had just happened. Nonplussed, she glanced at Aufwi, who looked as bemused as she felt, and then over at Urruah. Far from intervening, he was presently smelling a large downhanging red rose on a nearby bush and acting as if his thoughts were entirely elsewhere. Is this some tom-style intervention you two cooked up? Rhiow said to him privately.

Not at all, Urruah said, taking a last breath of the rose’s fragrance. Kind of wish I’d thought of it. But we’ve been so busy with work here that disciplinary issues kind of got shoved to the back of my mind. Now, though –

He strolled over to where Arhu was crouching, and leaned down to peer at the ear by which Hwaith had briefly held Arhu still. Just a drop of blood marked the spot.“That could’ve been interesting,” he said to Hwaith.

Hwaith gave him a casual sidewise look.“No point in half measures,” he said. “If you’re thinking about pulling someone’s ear off, make sure you’re in the right place to pull it all off…”

Urruah merely flirted his tail in agreement. Seeing this, Arhu’s eyes went a bit less outraged and furious, a little more scared.

Urruah bent lower.“Just because you’re useful,” Urruah said, “don’t get the idea that you’re so indispensable that you can be rude to those of us who outweigh you – in seniority, or otherwise.” The way he was looming over Arhu, in a more massive manner than the slighter Hwaith could manage, suggestedthat the always-loaded issues of relative weight and size were now on Urruah’s mind… or at least that he wanted Arhu to think they were. “Because if you let your hormones start talking for you, believe me, we’re going to talk back.”

“And as for Hwaith having come to us for help,” Rhiow said, coming up beside Urruah, “you of all People have no business complaining about where errantry’s needs might lead a cousin in the Art! Or, for that matter, anyone’s ability to handle a problem with or without assistance from others. You had plenty from us, as I recall.”

The three of them stood looking down at Arhu for a few moments more. He kept still, but Rhiow could see that some of the tension was going out of him, if only to be displaced for the moment by embarrassment. Not entirely a bad alternative under the circumstances, Rhiow thought.

“All right,” she said at last. “For the time being, it might be smart if you busied yourself with something concrete while we start setting up our plans for this evening. Go on back to the Silent Man’s, tell Sif to take a break, and go over the structure she’s setting up for us. I’ll want a report on its strengths and weaknesses from you when we get back.”

Arhu stood up as they all backed off to give him transport space.“It’s just makework…” he said under his breath.

All three of them just looked at Arhu and didn’t say a word.

Arhu looked away, the ear Hwaith had put a claw into twitching a couple of times, and he vanished.

Rhiow and Hwaith and Urruah all looked at each other, and then practically in unison sat down to wash— as Aufwi was already doing off to one side, in the polite not-noticing mode of a Person not closely involved in a disagreement. All their whiskers were well forward in amusement, though– not just at Arhu’s discomfiture, but their own.

“Hwaith,” Rhiow said as she licked one paw, “…thank you for saving me the trouble.”

“Not a problem,” he said, scrubbing one of his ears vigorously: the same one in which he’d hooked Arhu, she noticed.

“I feel for our two kits, though,” Rhiow said. “They’ve been caught up in such serious events since we all came together… yet they’ve always produced the result. Which makes me wonder if we’ve come to depend on them too much while they’re still so young.” She glanced at Urruah.

He merely flicked his ears back and forth in a don’t-know gesture and kept on washing his face.

“In any case, it can’t be easy having the Eye so young,” Hwaith said. “Not that the Ear’s exactly a nap on a sunny rock either…”

“But what you said before…” Rhiow paused in mid-face scrub. “Is it hormones? Or just stress?”

“Stress has a hormone,” Urruah said as he finished his wash. “But Rhi, it occurs to me that there may be entirely different hormonal business on Arhu’s mind.” He exchanged a glance with Hwaith.

Rhiow blinked, as the thought genuinely hadn’t occurred to her. “Well, yes…” she said after a moment. There was no specific prohibition against sibling-Persons mating with one another when the blood or the heart moved them to it. There were even versions of the Sehau and Aifheh story in which the Lovers were occasionally born as littermates. Of course People were taught by their dams that there could be too much of a good thing in this regard if it continued over a number of generations, and this opinion was reinforced by the high mortality in the litters and dams of prides that inbred too closely or failed to insource enough new blood. Yes, this situation’s different, Rhiow thought. But there are other problems. When wizardly teammates also start thinking about becoming heatmates, a whole new level of complexity adds itself to every spell and every transaction. And if Sif should actually go into heat…

Suddenly it all seemed just too much for Rhiow to bear. She stood up, her tail wagging as uncontrollably as Arhu’s had, even while the words of the meditation went through her head. Today I shall meet the circumstance it seems impossible to manage, the events that seem willingly to conspire against me as I do my work. These, and my own fear that I cannot manage them, I must recognize as the claws in sa’Rraah’s paw, modeled on my own for the purpose of slashing me more deeply — But the sentiment seemed far less useful today than it normally did. And here I am doing nothing –

“I should get back,” Rhiow said. “I need to have a look and see what Sif’s set up for us – “

“In the state you’re in?” Urruah said, sparing her tail no more than a moment’s glance and going back to scrubbing his ear. “I wouldn’t advise it.”

Rhiow was instantly tempted to tell him what she thought of his advice… and then caught herself, somewhat in shock. I’ve been telling him he needs to start acting more like a team leader, she thought. And when he does, what’s my first impulse?…

Rhiow didn’t move until she succeeded in quieting her tail down: and as usual, doing so paradoxically made her feel calmer. “All right,” she said, “you may have a point. Do you want to go back and look in on her first? And Arhu, naturally.”

Urruah got up and stretched fore and aft.“I’ll do that,” he said. “Rhi, there’s no rush about anything until Ith gets back to us. Take a little self time.”

“I’ll go too,” Aufwi said, and stood up, shaking himself once. “The Silent Man can probably use a more detailed explanation of what’s been going on.” He flirted his tail, a resigned gesture. “And why he probably shouldn’t come along tonight to help us…”

Without more ado, they were gone. Rhiow stood there for a moment listening to the mutter of the traffic off beyond the edges of the Park, then glanced over at Hwaith. She sighed.“I begin to think,” she said, “that I’m the one who needs a dose of the treatment you just handed Arhu.”

He flicked an ear and headed down the path away from the museum: Rhiow fell in beside him.“I doubt that,” Hwaith said. “Just think of the pressure you’ve been under! I get a sense you’re harder on yourself than you’d ever be on your teammates.”

Rhiow laughed under her breath as they made their way along between the rose bushes.“I guess,” she said. “But it’s hard to strike a balance, you know? Even just in normal times…” And she had to laugh again. “I’m having trouble at the moment even remembering what that feels like. Some lovely faraway time when all I had to worry about was the Grand Central gates malfunctioning again… and always in some new and interesting way that I took oh so seriously, as if the Lone One Herself was designing every malfunction just for me.” Rhiow rolled her eyes at herself. “May Queen Iau start sending me lovely problems like that again, instead of the one we’ve got at the moment!”

Hwaith chuckled, though the sound had a dark edge to it.“Tell me about it,” he said. “Everything in my practice was going so smoothly…”

“Until we turned up?” Rhiow said. “Well, don’t forget, it was you who came looking for us…”

The glance he gave her at first seemed a little strange to Rhiow: but then the bronzy eyes flickered away, and Rhiow was left wondering exactly what it was that had struck her as odd.“Yes,” Hwaith said in a tone that struck Rhiow as ironic, “I suppose I’ve no one but myself to blame…”

“For what?” Rhiow said, a touch amused. “The unfolding of causality?”

Hwaith didn’t answer immediately, looking across the great garden toward where the traffic could just be seen moving on the park’s south side. “Well,” he said after a moment, “it’s always annoying when one’s actions disrupt others’ personal schedules.”

That made Rhiow laugh.“It’d be novel to think that the Queen and Her daughters were overly concerned with the details of my schedule,” she said. “Mostly when you agree to wizardry, your schedule becomes something the Powers rewrite as needed.”

“But it’s hardly a one-way agreement,” Hwaith said. “They have a responsibility to us as well. There has to be some reciprocity, some service done in return for the service we do the world….”

“Well, of course, that’s understood,” Rhiow said, watching the spiderling land on a scrap of bark and pause there to get its bearings. It looked about it with eyes almost too small for even a sharp-eyed Person to see, then moved off under another bit of bark. “It’s not as if they ask you to go out on errantry when you’re in heat, for example, or rutting, or kittening.”

“It wasn’t the strictly physical situations I was thinking of,” Hwaith said. “More the personal ones.”

Rhiow flicked an ear at that as she paused in mid-stroll, having caught a flicker of motion out of the corner of one eye. From a bud-tipped stem of one of the nearby rose bushes, a minuscule grey fleck was dropping toward the rough bark-mulch covering the ground. Rhiow leaned close and saw a tiny baby spider, hardly out of the egg, busily spinning its first thread as it made its way out into the great world.“Well,” she said, “you know how it’s supposed to be. No wizardly mission is ever commissioned by Them in strict isolation, we’re told. Every intervention in the Queen’s world is meant to affect not just the problem it’s specifically devised to solve, but every ongoing situation, from the most central to the most peripheral. The ripples spread…”

Down the spiderling went, spinning down on its delicate thread and intent on its business, apparently quite oblivious to Rhiow and her issues and the potential destruction of this world and possibly others.“And even the most broadbased missions,” Rhiow said as she watched, “are meant as much toserve the wizards enacting them as the beings or situations that need our help.‘All is done for each…’”

Hwaith slipped up beside her and peered at the spiderling as it spun gently down.“Even in the situation we’re in now?” Hwaith said.

“I think we have to believe so,” Rhiow said. “The reciprocity ought to get more profound as the stakes rise, don’t you think? If They’re just. Which I think They are.”

The tiny spider came down on a shred of bark and paused there, looking around it with eyes almost too tiny for even a Person with good eyesight to make out. After a second it shook off the thread and started out across the bit of mulch, climbing up the first of a number of shred-marks on the brown, uneven surface like a climber assailing a hill.“Yes,” Hwaith said. “I’d agree with you there. I think that’s why we’ve met now.”

Rhiow continued watching the spiderling as it paused at a“hillcrest” and then started its descent into a valley-crease about an eighth of an inch deep. “You mean in terms of you and Helen and the Silent Man and our team all coming together to do this work –”

“Not exactly,” Hwaith said, and licked his nose. “Rhiow, I suppose there’s never really a perfect time to broach such a subject…”

The spiderling started climbing another“hill”. “Why,” Rhiow said, “what’s the matter? Do you have some kind of personal –”

She had been about to say“problem”, but the look in Hwaith’s eyes, vulnerable and yet peculiarly valiant, abruptly silenced her. “Yes I do,” he said. “Well, not that way exactly.” And he licked his nose again. “Rhiow, back where you come from – when you come from – is there someone for you?”

She completely lost interest in the tiny spider, and turned to stare at Hwaith.

“Well then,” he said. “I just want – no, what I mean is, perhaps you should know that –” He stopped and swore under his breath, and even through her complete shock Rhiow found herself thinking how very like Arhu Hwaith looked in this mode: the same helpless embarrassment, the same uncertainty about how to handle it, whether to be angry or abashed . “Whether you would be able to consider me for that role.”

“Hwaith,” Rhiow said. “Wait. Me?” Her ears were going back and forth in the immemorial gesture of a Person who can’t believe what she’s hearing — one which Rhiow desperately hoped didn’t make her look too much like a confused houff. “Hwaith, indeed I’m flattered, you have no idea, but, but why me?”

He looked abashed.“I don’t know that I’d be much good at explaining the reasons for this,” Hwaith said. “Don’t know that I could explain them to the Queen Herself right now if she showed up and started demanding details.” He seemed more able to look at Rhiow now, and those bronzy eyes locked on hers. “But then She doesn’t, usually. Except in shapes that we’re already familiar with…”

Rhiow sat down again, mostly in shock. Over the next few moments a previously unconnected set of conjectures began to fall into place in her mind, slotting together into one another in almost the way the parts of a spell did when you had all the necessary elements assembled together and were ready to proceed. The speed with which Urruah and Aufwi had taken themselves away. The thought that the“tom business” they had been executing might not have had anything to do with Arhu after all. A whole series of times when she and Hwaith had found themselves off by themselves for one reason or another. Come to think of it, his sudden appearance inside the Silent Man’s mind. Not just anotherwizard helping out with an intervention that was going wrong, she thought. Rather more than that –

She couldn’t help licking her own nose. Dear Queen, this is terrible. What am I going to do about this?

“Please don’t think I’m expecting you to give me any kind of answer,” Hwaith said hurriedly. “Naturally it’s taken you by surprise. Iau knew it took me by surprise. And we’ve got a lot to handle right now, important things to deal with, of course. But when they are handled – “

The question of what that eventuality would even look like left Rhiow utterly dumbfounded. Assuming that we do get everything handled…! She wanted to laugh out loud at the pat way Hwaith had put it. A lot of things to handle. Yes indeed! See off a vast horrible threat from right outside our sheaf of worlds, save the Universe, probably also save a batch of other universes as well: nothing too complicated. And after we get that all tidied up, let’s take some time and talk about having a relationship —

“I, ah,” Rhiow said. “Hwaith, I –” She scrambled to her feet again. “I’m sorry, we really need to get back to the Silent Man’s, I have to have time to look over that spell that Sif’s working on, and there are plans still to be made, we have to work out what to do if Ith doesn’t find those tablets before it’s time to go to Dagenham’s –”

She was babbling, and she knew it. She had rarely ever wanted more to disappear in a hurry, but she was having trouble putting the spell together in her head. And when did that last happen? Rhiow thought.“Forgive me, I’ve got to go –” she said, having trouble even looking at Hwaith now. She finally managed to remember how to assemble the transit spell, practically begging the universe to get out of her way and put her down where she needed to be, most desperately wanted to be, absolutely anywhere but here —

Rhiow vanished– but not without catching a last glimpse of those bronze eyes, resting in hers, unnerved yet at the same time looking strangely relieved. As the rose garden vanished around her, Rhiow recognized Hwaith’s look as the expression of someone who’s finally managed to ask the most important question in his world, and now waits courteously and patiently for the answer that another simply cannot give…

*

A second later, when she appeared in the back yard of the Silent Man’s house, the complete quiet of the place struck Rhiow as most peculiar when compared to the tumult in her mind. She trotted hurriedly into the house and found everything almost bizarrely calm. Sheba was lying on her back in the middle of the living room couch, snoozing while the Silent Man and Helen Walks Softly sat at opposite ends with Aufwi up on the couch’s back, discussing the details of what was likely to happen that evening. They glanced at her as she came in.

“Nothing from Ith…?” Rhiow said.

Aufwi glanced at her in faint surprise.“No. You’d have heard, surely. The backtime connection’s through you, after all…”

“Yes, of course –”

“Where’s Hwaith?” Helen said.

“Still back at the museum,” Rhiow said. “He had some questions –” Which was true.

A few seconds later Urruah came strolling down the hallway from the room where Siffha’h had been working. “Oh, you’re back,” he said. “Sif’s just about done. Arhu’s checking her work.” He waved his tail. “A nice job.”

“Good,” Rhiow said. “’Ruah, come on out and you can bring me up to date on the schedule for this evening…”

They headed out together through the French doors.“I’ve had Sif tailor her spell for around seven ehhif time,” Urruah said. “The group who’re meeting Dagenham will start gathering at his house around seven thirty, so this will give us a chance to start the spell running here and be sure it’s functioning correctly before we go up.” Heglanced back over his shoulder at the man and woman sitting inside on the couch. “Our silent friend knows we don’t want him along tonight, but when he offered to drive us up, I agreed. You were a little insistent about us keeping our profile low today. Being driven to some spot nearby will attract less attention than gating in would…”

“That sounds fine,” Rhiow said as she glanced around the back yard. She kept expecting to see a thin dark shape appear out of thin air absolutely silently…

After a few seconds she became aware that Urruah was looking at her oddly.“Are you all right? You’re looking unusually rattled.”

She opened her mouth to tell him to mind his own business, and once again was shocked at what she’d been about to say. “’Ruah,” she said. “…Hwaith…”

Urruah waved his tail gently.“So he got around to speaking his mind at last, did he,” he said. “I wondered.”

Rhiow sat down.“How long have you known this was in the wind?”

Urruah looked thoughtful.“Since he first turned up in Olvera Street?” he said. “The kits certainly saw how he was looking at you. I imagine even Aufwi may have noticed. Can you have been the only one who hasn’t seen this coming?”

Rhiow wanted to crouch down and simply hide her face: and this reaction too was so unlike her that it embarrassed her.“This is terrible,” she said under her breath. “There’s no way this can be happening. It’s all wrong –”

“In what way?” Urruah said.

She gave him an annoyed look, not sure she much cared for his amused tone.“Well, for one thing, we’re from different times, ‘Ruah! This presents certain problems, wouldn’t you say? And besides, I’m not – you know –”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t exactly have all the necessary equipment!” she hissed. “I haven’t had it since just before I took the Oath!”

“I think he may have noticed that,” Urruah said.

“Will you stop being so calm about this?!” Rhiow nearly shouted at him, and then was mortified at the way it had come out, practically in a howl of pain.

“I don’t mind holding the calm for both of us,” Urruah said, “until you find yours again.”

Rhiow shut up and concentrated on doing just that.“I don’t know, Rhi,” Urruah said, “ but it occurs to me that he may be interested in you for other reasons besides the straightforwardly physical. What do you think?” And there was a bit of a twinkle in his eye. “I would have thought that a Person of a certain age might actually prefer that kind of approach. You know – after the the need for the ‘kittenish excesses’ of which you keep warning Siffha’h has tapered off a bit.”

There was something profoundly annoying about Urruah using her own sentiments against her in circumstances like this.“Sorry,” Rhiow said. “It’s just that it’s a little, I don’t know, embarrassing to think that the people around you think you need somebody…”

“You know, Rhi,” Urruah said, “I could swear you’ve been talking about the same kind of thing about your Iaehh. Wondering if it’s good for him to be alone, muttering about how he really ought to start looking for someone to share his life…”

Rhiow was strongly tempted to whack Urruah soundly enough to reposition his ears. But at the same time… she thought. “Damn it, ‘Ruah,” she said, “you have a point.”

He scrubbed behind one ear for a moment without looking at her.“Glad to see that you’ve noticed.”

“But why me?” she said under her breath. “And, ‘Ruah, there’s no way it could work. What it seems he has for me, I don’t have for him. And even if I did –”

“Rhi,” Urruah said. “Let it alone. It’s not as if we’re not going to be busy enough, this evening –“

“That’s been worrying me too,” Rhiow said. “How can we work together with this going on –”

“You were doing it earlier in the day,” Urruah said, “and it didn’t seem to affect his performance. If it’s your performance you’re concerned about –” He flirted his tail at her. “You’ve got a few hours to settle yourself, so if you need to meditate, I suggest you get on with it. Or go look over Sif’s power layout, or help brief the Silent Man…”

“Or just get a grip,” Rhiow said, flicking an ear at him in agreement. “I hear you. … I supposed this was just one thing too many to take at that particular moment. What I really want to be hearing is Ith’s voice telling me what those other tablets say. Because if we don’t find out before we go…”

“I know,” Urruah said. “But meantime let’s go finish doing the work we can do. Not even the Powers can do more than that.”

Rhiow did indeed spend a little time with the Silent Man, and most of that in convincing him that he shouldn’t come with them that night. The others had attempted to explain to him that what they were doing was too dangerous, but when Rhiow saw that taking this tack was getting them nowhere – indeed possibly having the opposite effect – she moved immediately to a different tack.

“Naturally we’d want you with us,” she said, “if there were a simple way to keep you from being seen. All we have to do is be invisible is sidle…but for an ehhif it takes more work. If you accompanied us, someone would have to hold that spell in place for you – and that someone wouldn’t be free for other wizardry should there be need. But what’s more to the point is that while we’re working up at Elwin’s place, the best place for you to be is following up on matters that we can’t effectively pursue. There are some loose ends…”

“That studio fire, for one,” Helen said, sounding thoughtful. “The police connection is still a little murky. They didn’t do the kind of follow-up you would usually expect. And the local fire chief doesn’t seem to have been inclined to dig into causes, either. Almost as if somebody or other told him to just accept the studio fire department’s story and walk away…”

The Silent Man looked from Helen to Rhiow. Not that we don’t have our share of crooked cops, he said. The take goes way up the chain: has for years, now. And the fire departments are always squabbling over jurisdiction — famous for it. So I take your point. However – He gave Rhiow a look. Don’t think I don’t know a misdirect when I hear one, Blackie.

Rhiow’s tail started lashing with her exasperation. After a moment, embarrassed, she got it to hold still again – only to find the Silent Man soundlessly laughing at her as he cocked an eye at Helen. And you’re just as bad. Now, don’t start batting those big dark lashes of yours at me, sister! He gave Helen a mock-severe look. But all right… I know better than to push in somewhere I’d be more of a liability than an asset. I’ll sit this one out. How’ll I know what’s going on with you, though?

“We’ll find a way to get you word,” Rhiow said. “In fact, we have a silent partner working up the timestream from us who’d be perfect for the job. Assuming we hear from him before we have to go…”

She threw a glance at the windows. That eternal sunshine was already beginning to slant into afternoon; soon enough it would be early evening, and whether or not Ith had come through, they would have to go.“In the meantime,” Rhiow said, “if you’d like to drive us over within walking distance when it’s time, that’d be useful.”

The Silent Man nodded.“You don’t even like the idea of doing personal transports over that way?” Urruah said.

“No,” Rhiow said. “The less attention of any kind we draw to ourselves, the better I’m going to like it. Anyway, for now let’s get everyone together for a prebrief so that our silent partner will know the order of business. Who knows, he may come across something of use for him to look into…”

Urruah went off to gather everyone together. Shortly the whole team was gathered in the living room except for Hwaith and Aufwi.“Hwaith said he had something personal to attend to: he’ll meet us at Dagenham’s,” Urruah said. “Aufwi had to go deal with something gate-based… he’ll be along shortly.”

“All right,” Rhiow said. “So here’s the situation. As far as we can tell, there aren’t any overshadowed wizards involved in this operation. Judging from what we’ve found so far – especially the charm that secured the room where Arhu found the tablet drawings — Dagenham and his cronies have found and have been employing some fragments of wizardry, probably long phrases in the Speech, that are powerful enough for nonwizards to use as standalone operators.”

“Normally only a wizard can do spells,” Urruah said to the Silent Man. “Wizards in active practice are invested by the Powers that Be with a property called ‘enacture’. Without enacture in place, spells don’t run. But the Speech is the language that built the Universe… and some words and phrases in it are so powerful that even without enacture, they have the ability to change the world.”

Magic words… the Silent Man said. It’s like something out of a fairy tale.

“Lots of fairy tales have truth in them,” Rhiow said. “That’s one reason they last so long. But these fragments of the Speech can be found scattered around the landscape of human history like ancient relics or weapons. Some are worn down by long burial, almost unrecognizable. Some are clearto see for what they are, and can be still be used. We think it likely that Dagenham’s people have been using such fragmentary spells to try to control or command some of the minor dark powers associated with the Lone One: the idea being that the scavenger-powers have more energy to lend to the ehhifs’ intent.”

Leverage, the Silent Man said.

“Exactly. That’s something we can put a permanent stop to, and we’re going in tonight prepared to do that. But something worse is going on as well. My guess is that Dagenham or someone connected with him is preparing to enact another sacrificial murder, the latest in the sequence that this group of people, wittingly or unwittingly, has been facilitating. If they succeed, the Earth will move, and the sky will break, and powers from outside our sheaf of worlds will push in through the crack and try to establish a permanent presence here.”

Sounds bad, the Silent Man said.

His dry understatement was surprisingly calming, considering the way the mere description of the work that awaited them had made Rhiow’s stomach roil. It settled now, a little, though the reaction might be irrational. It’s like something the Great Tom would say, Rhiow thought. And why wouldn’t He speak through an ehhif if it suited him? The whole point is to speak and be heard…

“It would be bad,” Rhiow said. “In the aftermath of the quakes associated with the arrival of the power the ancient ehhif called Tepeyollotl, Los Angeles would certainly be destroyed in fire and water: and that’s just the least of the expected effects. I’m sure the poor dupes involved in this business somehow think they’ll be spared if they succeed… but they’re crazy.”

The Silent Man sat quietly for a moment. Knowing that you people have all kinds of amazing abilities, he said, I’m noting that you’re not making any offer to send me and the local feline population to safety.

“Because if we fail,” Helen said, “nowhere we could send you, in the short run, would be any safer in the long run than where you are right now. If this is the last day for all of us, better that you and the local People should go about your business, and their business, with dignity.”

And hope you succeed.

“I like our chances,” Urruah said, sounding a whole lot calmer than Rhiow felt. “Pity there’s no one to take the bet.”

Through his concern, the Silent Man got a glint of amusement in his eye: but over to one side Rhiow caught a glimpse of Arhu and Siffha’h exchanging a glance, and she could feel some private thought passing between them. Must ask about that later, if there’s time…

The French door on the backyard side of the room pushed open a little, and Aufwi slipped in.“Sorry,” he said, “I had a couple of local gate issues. It’s acting up again…”

“Why wouldn’t it,” Urruah muttered. “It has to feel how everything’s hanging in the balance right now…”

“And we’ve been doing that as long as we dare,” Rhiow said, “but we must get moving and get over there now. I could wish we had the last tranche of information that we need… but no matter: we’ll have to do without it.” She stood up. “Iau be with us in its absence, for we’ll need Her.” Her tail lashed with unease.

“Wait, what?” Aufwi said. “What’s still missing?”

“Ith can’t find the carvings uptime,” Rhiow said. “They’re not in the museum any more!”

Aufwi looked surprised.“What, at Exposition Park?”

“Of course, what else would she be talking about!” Urruah said.

Aufwi blinked at him.“But of course the carvings wouldn’t be there. They moved them.”

Rhiow stared.“What?”

“The pre-Columbian art was only in the old Museum until the Sixties,” Aufwi said. “But they ran out of room up there with all the other stuff they kept cramming into the same little space. So they built a new place, the LA County Museum of Art, down on Wilshire, by the Miracle Mile. ‘MuseumRow,’ they call it now: there’s a whole bunch of them down there – the Page Museum over by the Tar Pits and a few others.”

Rhiow sagged with relief.“So it’s just all been moved across town –?!”

“Only five miles or so,” Aufwi said. “Just tell your friend–”

Rhiow sat down again, reached down into her mind and poured everything she’d just heard down the until-now dormant link to Ith’s mind uptime. “I’ve told him,” Rhiow said. “Aufwi, I don’t know whether to pull your ears right off because you didn’t think to tell us this earlier, or to thank you and beg to have your kittens.” She caught Urruah giving her aslightly peculiar sideways look, and laughed. “Though in my present state that would take a lot of work. Never mind! Ith — ?”

I will go there straightaway, Ith said. As soon as I’ve seen the tablets, I will speak to you.

Rhiow stood up and shook herself.“Let’s get ourselves ready, then,” she said. “Last snacks and other personal business…”

All the People in the group dispersed and left Rhiow standing all by herself in the middle of the living room, feeling suddenly very alone and frightened, and wishing she could show it to someone, anyone. The Silent Man and Helen were talking quietly together, but Rhiow could see from their body language that it was something intimate in the ehhif mode, and interrupting them seemed rude. This is all so strange, Rhiow thought, and shivered. I want a lap to curl up on. Why do I feel so insufficient, all of a sudden?What’s the matter with me?

Slowly she turned toward the French doors and walked out into the back yard. What‘Ruah said may have something to it, she thought. Some meditation time is what I need. Let’s get on with it.

She just wished she could make herself believe it would make a difference….

The sound of the motor of the Silent Man’s big car purring away down the empty, narrow hillside road where he left them seemed very loud to Rhiow as she watched her People and Helen melt into the underbrush at the roadside. She stood there watching the big gleaming thing cruise slowly round the curve and pass out of sight. I wonder if he really understands what he’s gotten into… she thought.

Siffha’h, pausing beside Rhiow for a moment, looked past her at the vanishing car. “Rhi,” she said, “you have no idea how much energy I pumped into the wizardry around his house. It’d take a nuke to get through it.” As Rhiow opened her mouth, Siffha’h added, “And it’s not a conditional,either, so don’t give me that look. Whether we’re dead or alive after midnight, he’ll be as safe as anything can make him while he stays on this planet. Or in this continuum.”

Rhiow immediately felt guilty for treating Sif like a kitten.“I wasn’t –”

“You were,” Sif said. “You can’t see what your ears are doing.” Her tail was lashing, but it didn’t seem to be annoyance with Rhiow: rather with the whole situation they were stuck in. “Let it go.”

Rhiow put her tail over Sif’s back as the two of them stood for a last moment looking out at the strengthening glitter of the LA city lights, all a-tremble as the day’s heat rose into a sky gone dark umber with twilight. “I just want you to know,” she said, “that you’ve proven yourself a wizard to be reckoned with a hundred times over in the last year.”

Further down the hillside, the lights of the Silent Man’s car rounded another curve, briefly gold on the dark road, and vanished again. “Well, you’ve been a pretty good team leader, too,” Siffha’h said. “I’d say I can speak for us both on that, though getting my dimwit brother to say as much…”

“He has his ways of saying it,” Rhiow said. “Don’t worry on his part. Meanwhile, the others are waiting…”

The two of them slipped into the hillside brush after the others. There were no houses along here: the hillside was too steep even for the most ambitious ehhif builders to risk putting houses on it. Up at the top of the hill, though, where Dagenham’s house was perched, was another story.

Rhiow caught up with the rest of the team where they waited in the brush. Helen, now wearing dark sweats and sneakers and with her hair tied back tight, was crouching down under a gnarled Manzanita bush and digging her hands into the dry crumblyleaf-mould mulch. Under it the ground still had a touch of dampness left over from the soaked-in morning dewfall: Helen rubbed her hands in it an then rubbed her face to get rid of any shine and go darker and more patchy.

“You could just sidle,” Arhu said.

“Sooner not,” Helen said. “Right now I have this feeling that something up there is watching, watching… The less wizardry, the better.” She looked over at Rhiow.

“We’re thinking inside the same skin, cousin,” Rhiow said. “I’d sooner get in there without sidling if I could…”

“There might be a way,” said a voice from the shadows.

Hwaith came slipping out from under another of the manzanitas, half-invisible in the deepening twilight to even a Person’s eye until he moved. “Would you believe,” he said, “that this place has a wine cellar?”

“Not sure how it could avoid having one,” Urruah said, “having seen how the party crowds here soak the stuff up.”

“So right,” Hwaith said. “Natural cooling from the hillside. Locked on the inside, obviously. A nice iron gate to let the visitors see down the length of the tunnel. But you know…” He waved his tail. “There must be a lot of condensation when the temperatures on the hillside get really hot.”

“Which in this climate would be mostly…” Aufwi said.

“Because there’s a drain channel down the middle of the tunnel, and the condensation runs down it into a little pipe that lets out, oh…” He turned and wandered over to another bush a few yards away. “Right about here.”

And of course once you were looking for it, or right at it, it was impossible not to see the terra-cotta drainpipe all covered with detritus from the brush all around, and dully moss-colored from the parched moss that was growing in the only place it could manage to. The runoff hadn’t managed to dig too deep a gully on its way down the road: mostly it soaked into the ground and fed an unusually green and well-grown patch of brush.

Rhiow slipped over to the pipe and looked at it, then bent down to measure the width with her whiskers.“Kind of a tight fit…”

“Not for those of us who’ve been watching our intake,” Hwaith said, glancing in an idle manner toward Urruah.

Arhu and Siffha’h collapsed briefly into muffled adolescent snickering. Aufwi hunted more or less desperately for some other direction to look in. Urruah gave Hwaith a glance that might have been avuncular if fewer of his claws had been retracted at that moment. “Child,” he said, “watch and learn.”

Urruah bent down and gradually vanished into the pipe, though it was educational to watch what he had to do with his hindquarters to manage it. Rhiow slipped up beside Hwaith and said under her breath,“How can you joke at a time like this?”

“Now or never,” Hwaith said, giving her one of those sidewise looks. “I’d say this is the time for making use of last chances.” And in he went after Urruah.

Rhiow stood there feeling for a moment as if a claw had been very purposefully stuck into some previously unidentified tender spot on her hide. No one else had a look for her; Arhu slipped into the pipe after Urruah, and Sif and Aufwi after him.

Helen simply vanished… though not completely. Rhiow looked around her and saw nothing but a little shiny green beetle sitting on the ground where an ehhif surely no shorter than five foot eleven had been squatting. Where have you put your mass?? she said silently. And that wasn’t even a wizardry. How did you —

Elsewhere, Helen said. It’s a bit of a talent. She scurried up Rhiow’s tail onto her back. Quickly now, cousin, I’m compressed down pretty tight here –

Shortly, so was Rhiow. The kits had made light work of the pipe, and even Urruah had maneuvered himself in here somehow, but Rhiow found herself wondering whether Iaehh’s description of her as “plumptious” might actually have some foundation in fact. If anything’s left of the fabric of reality after I get back, she thought, I’ll have to look into it… She crawled along paw over paw, her back scraping the top of the pipe, though she was trying to keep it flat for Helen’s sake. Where the aueh are you?

Between your shoulderblades.

Rhiow hissed as she pulled herself along. It’s not even as if I drink that much cream.

How much is that much?

You’re not helping. Way down at the end of the pipe she could see a dim light. I’m a wizard, Rhiow said silently, and in considerable annoyance. In the course of my Art I will be thrust into embarrassing positions and situations that I may consider unbefitting to my dignity. I must remember that no dignity of mine matches that of Those who conferred my office upon me –

I’m betting you won’t catch Aaurh the Mighty stuffing Herself into something like this, Helen said.

The light was closer. Rhiow found it hard not to laugh, despite the weight and press of events. Cousin, she said, if we’re spared and come back to our own time and place, most seriously I desire your better acquaintance: because for an ehhif you’ve a very Personish sense of humor.

I take that as high praise, Helen said, and may the Queen take the mouse straight from your mouth and so claim it for her own that only the tail hangs out when She’s done. Here we are now –

Maybe a yard ahead the pipe widened out into a tiny tunnel with a grille at one end, perhaps a foot wide. The grille, though, was thin wire stuff susceptible of being bent to one side by a Person approaching with enough intent from the far side: and whatever intent Hwaith might have earlier imparted to it, Urruah had added a whole lot more. The grille was well bent askew from the bottom up, and Rhiow peered out under the bent-upwards part into a long dimly-lit space with an old tiled floor and brick walls.

Rhiow slipped through the opening and paused, looking around at the others, who were checking the space out. Helen scuttled down off Rhiow’s shoulder, down her leg and onto the floor, and beetled well off to one side near the closest of a series of dusty wood-and-wire wine racks stacked up high against the walls. A second later she was in ehhif shape again, down on one knee on the bricks and glancing around. “I’ll bet this isn’t the only space under this house that’s dug into the hillside like this…” Helen said.

“We don’t need to search the place,” Rhiow said. “The guests are going to be arriving pretty soon. All we need to do is position ourselves here and there inside the house and close to it, hidden, and wait to see where they go.”

“Not being seen is going to be the issue,” Siffha’h said. She was bristling.

So was Arhu. He was staring into the shadows behind the wine racks nearest him as if he thought the dusty bottles were likely to come at him. But it wasn’t just dust he was seeing. “The place is full of sthahheh,” he said, hardly above a whisper.

Rhiow glanced at Helen, not sure if she knew the Ailurin word. But Helen nodded.“Amrakyumara,” she said, a word of her own language, and “behind” this Rhiow immediately heard the Speech-word ukfasht. It was the blanket term for the dark beings that were not quite ghosts and not quite demons, never-embodied minor energies of darkness that gathered and clung around sa’Rraah and Her minions, battening on the power of Her hatred and Her desire for unlife.

“Where were they when we were here?” Urruah said under his breath.

“Probably penned up somewhere,” Arhu said. “But the shadows are all boiling with sa’Rraah’s nasty little pets. Like rats, rustling.” The fur was standing up all over him. “This place is one big garbage can to them, just waiting to be tipped over…”

“Penned up,” Rhiow said, thoughtful. The suggestion made her bristle. It was possible that Dagenham and whoever was working with him hadn’t wanted to take the chance that some of the ehhif visitors might be sensitive to such manifestations. She liked that possibility a lot better than the idea that the shadow-imps had been locked up because the conspirators thought that a few wizards might find a way to sneak themselves onto the guest list. And because I like the other possibility better, that means that this one is far more likely…

“Exactly how well can they see us, I wonder?” Aufwi said.

“For now, the way we see them,” Rhiow said. “As shadows: more sensed than truly seen. They need intention – evil intention – and concentration, to make them more than vaguely aware.” She started up toward the far end of the tunnel, which was barred by an elaborate iron gate, all curves and whorls of black metal. “Anyway, they’re not going to get that from us. What we need to concentrate on is finding where the ehhif meeting with Dagenham are going – “

That was when they heard a door open down the hallway past the iron gate, and the sound of footsteps down the hall.

All heads came up.“Arhu!” Rhiow said. “You’ve been in here most. Drop some out-of-the-way hiding places into our minds. We’ll all transit quickly in a lot of directions – attracting less attention or at least creating more confusion if anyone who understands what transits look like is watching. Keep the noise of it down, everybody! We’ll keep our heads down while Arhu goes to ground and Sees for a little. Arhu, find where the shadows are thickest – I’m betting that’s where tonight’s meeting will be. Don’t speak for a quarter of an hour ehhif time. Then just a burst to me. All of you, get ready to go!”

Helen vanished again, and the People swiftly melted into the shadows, waiting for the iron gate down at the other end to open. It would be only a matter of a few moments before before an ehhif or two walked in here, and their attention as usual would be on trying to make out where they were going, not what was going on behind them. Their eyes are always bad coming in out of light into dark, Rhiow thought, putting herself backwards into the dusty spot between two wine racks. Cobwebs plastered themselves all over her fur, and behind her a crowd of spiders cursed her out in tiny voices.

It wasn’t their voices she was intent on, thuough. “ – wasting the good stuff on them – “ said someone.

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” said a second, more familiar voice. “After the big one goes down, we’ll have enough of this stuff to swim in if we want it.”

Silhouettes stepped up to the gate: one tall, one smaller, slighter, both male.“Hard to imagine what that’s going to be like…” said the taller one.

Here, Arhu said to Rhiow, and showed her the spot he intended for her. She started to flick her tail in acknowledgement, and then stopped it to keep from discommoding any more spiders as the location manifested itself in her mind: a level up and down a hallway, tucked away underneath a tall cylindrical shape that Rhiow recognized as an old-fashioned hot water heater. She hooked the location’s coordinates up to the fast-transit spell she kept ready in her thought-workspace, but her mind wasn’t really on it. She was concentrating on the clatter of the big key in the lock, the casual laughter of the smaller of the forms. Dagenham, Rhiow thought.

The gate swung in with a creak: he stepped in, the other ehhif behind him. Rhiow kept perfectly still and concentrated on being as small and black as she could, while the two shapes came down the middle of the wine cellar-tunnel.“Haven’t had much time to spend on that,” he said to his companion. “Last-minute logistics are such a bitch. But it’s all coming together tonight at last…”

It amazed her, even in this dimness, to see how very differently Dagenham carried himself from the way he had at the party. No diffidence now, none of that unease of a functionary among persons far more important than himself. All that was cast away. At the moment Dagenham was wearing only casual dark trousers, a white shirt, suspenders; but now he was clothed in much more. From endless hours spent in New York streets watching every kind of ehhif, Rhiow knew the look and body language of success, of certainty, of arrogance among their kind, and Dagenham was wearing them all.

The two came closer, most of them out of sight from her point of view now except for their shoes. One pair of them, the other ehhif’s shoes – a pair of brown wingtips — stopped as he looked at something in the wine rack above Rhiow. She held her breath. “How many of them even understand what’s going to happen?” the ehhif said. “Or what’s going to be asked of them?”

The second pair of shoes kept going. Down low, Rhiow felt a breath of air– one of her People transporting out with maximum caution. Oh please let them mistake it for a draft, she thought. Better to do that from behind them rather than in front of them, they’d be more likely to believe a draft was coming that way – For the thought of the crowding shadows that Arhu had Seen was much with her. Too easy for them to alert this man or someone working with him if they get really conscious of us —

“If they haven’t figured it out by now, then we don’t need them,” Dagenham said. “It’s been spelled out again and again. Now that the last package has arrived, we’re in the endgame. If they make the offer, it goes easier with them. If they try to hedge their bets by not offering…”His footsteps kept on going down the wine cellar, paused at last.

Clink, clink, went one bottle against another. Across the way, behind one of the opposite wine racks, Rhiow saw a white-and-black patched form sliding along the wall toward the door, paying no mind to any spiders’ complaints. A second later the shape was gone, with even less wind this time. Sif. Good.

“Maybe they’re just not sure,” said the second ehhif’s voice. Rhiow cocked an ear. All of a sudden he was sounding familiar somehow. Was he at the party? Could have been — There had been such a press of ehhif there, so much noise…

Another breath of wind, even more slight this time. Aufwi, she thought. Or Urruah. I shouldn’t wait, I should go… “There’s no time left for that,” Dagenham said, against more clinking. “You of all people should know. You’ve got all your choices made, even this last-minute one – “

“Well, why not?” said the second ehhif, and Rhiow could hear the shrug in his voice. “If They want her, fine. If not, I’ll have the use of her for a while…” He paused: clink, clink. “Red or white?”

Wait, Rhiow thought. Wait, I do know him–

“For this?” Dagenham chuckled. “Red. Don’t want to dilute the color scheme…”

They started back toward her. No more time: she had to go. Rhiow activated the transit spell with the greatest care—

Darkness, and a space small for her, as Rhiow could tell by the feeling she got from her whiskers even without moving to check the impression. In front of her, a crack-defined square with faint light coming through it. Warmth from above: that would be the water heater Arhu had shown her. And partly between her and the light, something was swiftly fading into solidity—

Images of possible lurking shadow-imps flooded over her. Rhiow fumbled hastily in her mind for a spell as the dark thing came darker, came real…

It dropped its jaw at her, and bronze eyes glinted in the light from the crack around the door. It was Hwaith.

Rhiow sagged with relief, but also annoyance.“How does this keep happening?” she said. “You’re just stalking me, that’s all…”

“I promise you, it was an accident,” Hwaith said, and Rhiow was surprised to hear that he sounded as testy as she felt, at least for the moment. “Took the coordinates our young cousin gave me and never gave it a second thought. So blame him. Or blame it on sa’Rraah if you feel the need, andwe’ll take it out of Her hide later.”

Rhiow crouched there and tried to manage her annoyance.“All right,” she said, and for the next few moments sat quiet and listened.

She could hear a faint buzzing at the edge of hearing. She glanced up at the water heater, wondering if the noise had something to do with its electrical system. But that didn’t seem to be the source. “Hwaith,” she said, “you have the Ear…”

“It’s them, all right,” he said. “What Arhu heard.” His ears were flicking with his own annoyance. “They’re like rats in the walls here. Disgusting things…”

Rhiow tried to calm herself down a little, concentrating on her breathing, which sounded loud to her. Nothing to do now but wait until Arhu reports in… Yet at the same time she was quite aware of how not so much as a hair of Hwaith’s fur was touching hers, despite how small this space was. Without looking as if he was crowding away from her, nonetheless he was; and after that first glance he wouldn’t now look at her.

Rhiow stayed crouched down and breathed for a while, waiting to see if the tension would relax at all. It didn’t. And there’s spellwork coming, she thought. This isn’t good. It could interfere with the way the team operates, and most especially now that can’t be allowed…

“Hwaith,” she said.

He turned one ear in her direction, didn’t move otherwise, didn’t speak.

“About before…”

The ear flicked, but that was all.

Rhiow sighed.“Hwaith…” She wasn’t quite sure where to begin. “And what you said. It’s not that I’m not honored…indeed, flattered…”

He finally flicked a lazy glance at her. She eyed Hwaith’s whiskers carefully in that darkness, judging how far forward they were set. Hwaith’s look was entirely neutral.

“But you have to know it’s impossible,” Rhiow said, as gently as she could. “Leaving aside the issue of our separate times – it’s just not a thing that can happen….”

“’Impossible,’” Hwaith said, giving Rhiow a challenging look. “If we were younger wizards, it’s not a word either of us would be using.”

“Of course that’s where the youngest of us get their advantage,” Rhiow said. “But we’re both well past that stage now: not just lives along, but years. Wizards our age have to rely on expertise rather than mere blunt power.”

“And always run the risk of forgetting how our own definitions of possibility limit what we can do,” Hwaith said. The tone wasn’t accusatory: he might have been discussing the weather. “And as for the lives: that’s exactly the point. Neither of us is in a place in our travels where we canafford to just say ‘Maybe next time will work out better.’ Are we?”

For some seconds Rhiow was silent. Her soul was suddenly full of the echoes of her shock at discovering, not so long ago, that Saash— Saash who she thought she’d known so well — was nine lives along and nearing that final threshold that no wise Person approached without some unease. No one had any way to know whether he or she was one of those whose lives had brought them so closely into tune with the Powers’ way of being that they would inherit the gift that Aifheh and Sehau had won in sa’Rraah’s despite. Many People made light of that gift, saying that nine lives should be enough for anybody, and that an eternity of service afterwards was more than even the Gods had a right to demand. But Rhiow wasn’t one of these.

The issue of the number of one’s lives behind and the number yet to come was one not lightly discussed by any Person, wizard or not. Rhiow noticed that Hwaith had not volunteered any specific data. But he’s smart enough to read the signs, she thought, being familiar with them in himself… “Hwaith,” Rhiow said at last. “Why me? It can’t be … mere physical issues…”

Hwaith did put his whiskers forward then.“You have a bit of a blind spot,” he said, “for the physical issues.”

Then he hurriedly ducked away from the swipe she aimed at him.“So,” Hwaith said, though good-humoredly, “that prey was well spotted. Rhiow, what would be wrong with someone finding you beautiful? And I’m not talking about just the way you move. Or the wise way you handle your team. Why would it make me an idiot to say that I like your eyes? And what looks out of them.”

She was warmed, and embarrassed, both at once.“You are an idiot,” she said. “And by that measure we’re well matched, because so am I for letting you go on like this! Sweet Iau, Hwaith, consider the circumstances! Ehhif sacrifice, earthquakes, the Lone Power being wooed by some bigger darker power trying to use Her as a tool to destroy the world, and the Queen only knows how many other worlds too – this is not a time to be thinking about romance!”

“If you may never have another chance, it is,” Hwaith said. “Especially when you haven’t seen anybody in this life that you think it might work with, and suddenly they come along. What, am I supposed to bury my Personhood in a hole until circumstances improve? And in a universe where Entropy’s running, when’s that likely to happen, do you think? It’s who I am that makes me of use to the Powers. Or so They keep telling us.”

Rhiow had no immediate answer to that, and had to fall back on a different angle of approach, one that she was a lot less comfortable with.“Hwaith, that’s not the real problem here,” she said. “It’s just that…” She suddenly felt ashamed to say it, and had no idea why. “It’s just not returned,” Rhiow finally said, very low. “It means a lot to me, that you feel so kindly toward me, but I just…”

He looked full at her, and Rhiow was peculiarly relieved to see that Hwaith didn’t look hurt. But the expression in his eyes was strange in other ways. “Kindness has nothing to do with it,” Hwaith said. “The heart spoke, is all. It knew something I didn’t. Knew it the moment I laid eyes on you.” He looked away. “I could almost say I’m sorry. Except wizards don’t lie, and I’m not sorry –”

Rhi, Arhu said.

She licked her nose, looked away too. Ehhif are arriving, Arhu said. Some in groups. And I’ve seen where the first few went as soon as they came in. Down on the level where the wine cellar is, but right on the other side of the house, up against the big hill: there’s a door at the back of another of these little rooms. I can’t see in there very well: it’s heaving with sa’Rraah’s little jackals.

All right, Rhiow said. Pass the news to the others. She thought for a moment about whether it would be wiser to wait until all the ehhif were in, or go early. Early won. Arhu, I need you to go in first, she said. Hide and look around. Then pass us coordinates and we’ll slip into some quiet spot that you recommend.

Fine.

And remind Sif to keep her power-presence low and quiet! Rhiow said. The jackals are going to be twitchy enough at the feel of her just being in the space. The less reason they might have to crystallize their attention out, the better.

She knows that, Arhu said.

Good. Where’s Helen?

Aufwi says she’s sitting on his head. Arhu sounded bemused. Is anybody going to tell me exactly how that works?

If we see the dawn, I’m hoping she’ll tell me, Rhiow said. And ‘Ruah –

He’s closest to the door into the hill. Down the hall and outside. He’ll come in right after me.

Fine. Choose your moment, then send along the coordinates. And if you should hear Dagenham nearby, be very sure not to be seen. There’s something about him – Rhiow bristled a little.

All right. In-mind silence fell again.

The silence outside her mind was far less comfortable to deal with. Rhiow licked her nose again: she couldn’t help it. “Hwaith — ” she said.

“Rhiow, don’t,” Hwaith said. “Let it lie. If dawn comes and we see it, there’s time to take this further. And maybe no need to.”

His tone wasn’t flat or neutral: he genuinely wasn’t upset. Rhiow couldn’t understand it, because she certainly was.

She got busy calming herself down again. I seem to be doing so much of that, she thought. It has to be due to spending such a while in the wrong time…. It was a well-known side effect of prolonged timesliding. A day or so wouldn’t do much harm: the soul fairly quickly forgave you the injury of being briefly decoupled from its proper temporospatial alignment. But the longer the decoupling lasted, the worse the effects, and if you –

I’m in, Arhu said.

His tone of mind was unnerved. What? Rhiow said silently.

A long moment’s silence. Rhiow’s fur started standing up. Are you all right…?

You should see this–

Don’t show me! Just wait till ‘Ruah gets in. Then give us the mark to hit.

A few seconds later the coordinates appeared in their minds. Rhiow’s eyes met Hwaith’s. Let’s go –

The Big Meow: Chapter Eleven

They came out in shadow nearly as deep as the little cupboard they’d left. But the feel of the space on Rhiow’s fur and whiskers was instantly different: high, wide, deep. The air was unnaturally cool, unnaturally damp, and utterly still; and except for one faint light away off to Rhiow’s right, everything was nearly as dark as night.

They were in a natural cave that reached up above them into the upper reaches of the hillside behind the house. But the cold rammed-earth floor where Rhiow and Hwaith now crouched, with Arhu and Sif and Urruah and Aufwi behind them, was well below the level of the wine cellar. The hard dirt under their feet felt surprisingly damp, considering how hot and dry everything was just a matter of forty or fifty feet above them on the surface.

With the others, deep in shadow near one of the cavern walls, Rhiow held absolutely still and looked around. The wall behind them was just raw earth mixed with haphazardly buried stone– rocks and boulders that looked like they might have been washed down into pressure-hardened mud many years ago by some flash flood in one of the surrounding ravines. Roots stuck through the raw earth of the walls here and there: in places the wall had crumbled away, leaving little piles of unregarded dirt. Holes in the cavern walls suggested that small creatures had tunneled in or out over time. It was hard to imagine rabbits coming down this deep: the immediate assumption had to be rats.

The space enclosed by the damp earth walls was roughly circular, though the ceiling was higher down toward one end than at the other. In the dimness, maybe fifty feet up, Rhiow could just see some roots hanging down through that ceiling, possibly the roots of one or more trees up on the hillside, all shriveled and dried out from not having found water. Beyond that, the cavern had no unusual characteristics except for what lay in its center.

At first she thought it was just a single circle of rough stones, maybe thirty feet across. They were not carved as far as Rhiow could tell, maybe not even shaped: lumpy, rounded boulders, longer than they were wide, more or less stuck in the ground. Inside them, and outside them, were two matching rings of smaller stones. There were perhaps twenty of the big ones, and maybe thirty of the smaller stones in the outer circle. The inner one was harder to judge, partly because as Rhiow looked at the stones, she found herself having trouble getting a count. There was something about the stones that made her dislike looking at them.

Hunting circle, Helen said silently. Or it started out that way….

This is something to do with your people? Siffha’h said.

It might have been once… a very, very long time ago. But then someone started using the ring for some other purpose. A pause. And then it looks as if at some point a hillside fell on it… which suggests the other purpose might not have been very wholesome.

Did the Azteca ehhif ever come up this far? Aufwi said.

I don’t know, Helen said. It doesn’t have to have been them. Just someone who perhaps had been down into their lands, heard from them about the powerful being they were beginning to worship… then brought the news up north.

Rhiow’s tail lashed. She looked rightward toward the source of the faint light, sniffed the air. Something’s burning –

It’s one of those little camp lanterns ehhif use, Arhu said. It burns one of those petroleum liquids they use. I saw one bring it in a while ago through the door they’re using down there… then he went away. A few others came in too, looked around, then left again. They were talking about the others coming here, getting ready to come in here very soon and do something…

Probably best we should scatter around before they start coming in here in numbers, Rhiow said. Stay by the walls. Their eyes aren’t anything like as good as ours under these conditions: they won’t be able to see much even if they bring more lights in here.

Her team split up and took off in both directions. Off to one side, Arhu was lingering. How many have you seen coming into the house so far? Rhiow said.

Twenty or so.

All right. Go on. And Arhu– He paused. Watch Sif’s back. She’s likely to make the difference between us being able to stop what starts happening here or not making any difference at all.

Don’t worry… I’ll be right with her. He faded off into the darkness.

Rhiow looked at the stones again, trying to force herself to concentrate on the nearest of the large ones. It was hard: she felt her eyes burning as something made her want more and more to look away. Nasty, she said. Come on, Hwaith, no point in lurking there and hoping I won’t notice you. If you’re going to be with me, be with me.

She headed off toward the nearest of the big stones, being careful to keep it between her and that dim light down by the doorway. Are you seeing what I’m seeing? Hwaith said.

I’m not seeing much of anything, Rhiow said as they got closer to the stone: her eyes were bothering her more and more as she tried to focus on the thing.

Not that, Rhiow. Look at the strings!

Unusually for a gate technician, she had been paying little attention to the hyperstring structure in the area. Now Rhiow made the little mental shift necessary to alter the way she was seeing the physical world, and the hyperstrings in the area sprang into view. But she didn’t see the normal relatively straight warp and weft of brilliant lines that grossly marked the structure on which the physical universe was hung. Here the lines of force invisibly filling the air were all warped out of shape, unnaturally bundled together around the circle, as if they were writhing away from the stones in the circle.

It wasn’t the stones themselves that were the major force disrupting the string structures, however. It was the hard-to-see diagram dug into the rammed clay in the circle’s center. All right, Rhiow said silently, we knew something like this would probably be here… She moved forward cautiously, avoiding the chance of touching any of the stones, and watching where she put her feet to make sure she didn’t come in contact with any of the figure inscribed into the ground. Even if the thing was composed entirely of fragments of charms, it was entirely capable of containing “tripwires” that would alert whoever had drawn it.

From way down the cavern, near the wall, she caught a flash of Urruah’s eyes as he paused near the kerosene lamp to look back her way. This is so un-Hollywood, he said. There should be all kinds of evil carved figures, a big dais, a sacrificial altar…

We’ve got more than enough nasty stuff here without starting to complain about the aesthetics, Rhiow said, pausing at the edge of the diagram and looking it over. Behind her, Hwaith was circling past one of the stones to her left to get another angle on it.

Rhiow had been half expecting either a clumsy aggregation of mangled Speech-symbols or one of the peculiar but nonfunctional spell diagrams that had percolated down through ehhif popular culture from medieval times, some farrago of alchemical symbols, ancient languages and confused numerology. But this was neither. Scratched in the ground the diagram might be, no polished work, but all the essential elements of a spell circle were here. Inside a series of nested envelopment circles and intersecting power management rhomboids were many long and intricately interconnected statements in the Speech. Rhiow knew she could spend a good while teasing out the fine details, but the overall structure made the spell’s purpose clear. It was meant to contain and trap power funneled into it from outside, and it was full of symbols and contractions that had to do with the confinement of extracted life force. The means of extraction were obvious enough: the broad bloodstains were still in place, the color plain even though the clotted blood had been scraped away. With the blood, soaked into the ground under the spell circle, she could feel the remnants of many previous ehhif attempts to contact dark forces and twist their power to the ehhifs’ will. Blood had been spilled then too, though with far less focused purpose than most recently. Rhiow looked away from the biggest pool and saw something that in its way troubled her more: the eight stones dropped here and there on focus points of the circle’s inner diagrams. At least they looked like stones at first. But if they were stones, then someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to carve each one into the likeness of an ehhif’s torn-out or cut-out heart…

Rhiow shook her head at the low, angry, hungry buzzing noise that was getting louder every minute while she stood inside the stone circle. Here one could clearly hear sa’Rraah’s little minions, and sense them thronging thickly around, just as Arhu said. You could feel them in the air but most especially in the ground, through your feet, as if yellowjackets had buried nests everywhere under the floor. The shadow-imps were reacting, not just to the presence of wizards here, but to the greedy and ambitious ehhif who had once again been stirring up that old pool of darkness with their desire to control it. And more so than usual, Rhiow thought, because this time the stakes are so much higher. This time sa’Rraah has so much more to gain if the ehhif’s endeavor succeeds…

Out at the edge of the circle of stones, Aufwi had slipped out of the shadows to examine the circle more closely. There was definitely a gate here, Rhiow, he said. You can see where the ambient string structure’s deformed by the material memory in the floor of the previous gate anchoring, and there are some temporary mooring receptacles still sunk underneath this circle. But some time in the recent past the gate was moved to that temporary anchorage we found upstairs… maybe while somebody was workingon it who didn’t want to be down here all the time.

I can understand that, Rhiow said, for that dark buzzing at the edge of things was getting more and more unbearable. And something else was troubling her: an increasing sense of being buried, buried alive, buried in ground that nonetheless was thinking about moving, moving the first chance it got, killing everything… She shook herself, told herself to stay focused. Anyway, it’s not up there now. And it’s not down here. Where’ve they got it stowed? Because whatever gate was operating here was extremely powerful, on a par with a hardwired permanent gate. It has to have deranged everything else for milesaround whenever it went operational. No wonder the formally emplaced gates in the area have been acting so badly….

She glanced over at Hwaith, whose tail was fluffed out to about three times its size as he stared at the spell diagram. Gating issues were plainly far from his mind right now. Rhiow, this is very bad, he said. This isn’t just some clueless ehhif dabbling. This is professional stuff.

Her tail lashed in agreement. It’s unquestionably the Speech, Rhiow said. Unquestionably a spell. But now we’re left with the question: how could it possibly ever enact? No wizard in the Powers’ service would ever build a spell like this. Or expect anything to come of it —

Yet then Rhiow had to stop, for at least once now she’d seen a wizard working in a Power’s service because it knew no other source of power… and his spells had enacted. But that was in another universe, a whole pocket world in the Downside that the Lone One had subverted to its own intentions. This is the Powers’ world. This kind of thing can’t work here –

It can if the wizard’s physical tie to Them has been completely severed, Hwaith said, his voice full of pity and dread. And all that remains is a soul-shell that walks and speaks and hates…

Her eyes met his in the dark, widening in realization. And down at the end of the cavern, the door opened and ehhif started filing in.

Swiftly and silently Rhiow and Hwaith fled for the walls, staying in the shadows. Those writhed and darkened now in the light of the tall torches some of the ehhif were bearing in with them. In and in they came, making for the circle of stones, the line of approaching ehhif parting around it as they came near: one to the left, the next to the right, left, right… They were all dressed in long dark blood-colored garments, and the embroidery on these caught the torchlight here and there with brief glints of gold and silver as the ehhif moved to surround the rings of stones.

Robes, Urruah said softly. They’re wearing robes with ‘arcane’ symbols on them. Do you believe this?

You were the one who was wanting this situation to get more filmic! Rhiow said. But I wouldn’t mock. Anything that makes it easier for whichever of them is really behind this sordid business isn’t to be ridiculed, much though we might feel like it. And these people live in Drama Central, by definition. Her tail lashed. But Ruah, feel for yourself! Not one of these people is a wizard —

A last shape came in through the door at the cavern’s end, himself carrying something in his hands that Rhiow couldn’t make out, something small and dark and hard to make out against his clothes. Slowly he came, like the person in whose honor the first part of the procession had been staged. He too was wearing a robe, but it was dead black, without any arcana embroidered on it. Elwin Dagenham’s pale hands and his white face, in this dark place, seemed almost to float along by themselves, bodiless, a most peculiar effect.

He took up the one position in the circle that had been left open for him, and stood there a moment, looking around in the torchlit dimness with an expression of supreme satisfaction. Rhiow was astonished again at the difference in Dagenham, for he was now completely unlike the diffident little figure from the party; he was holding himself more erect, looking more prideful, far more in control. Robes or no robes, Dagenham looked like he had a purpose in which he believed implicitly and which made him far greater than he allowed others in the daylight world to believe.

“Friends,” he said, “tonight is the night.” And that pallid little voice that Rhiow had only before heard cajoling, pleading, flattering, now was also completely changed. It filled the place, even in that space where the raw earth of the walls should have deadened sound. “We’ve drunk the cup and welcomed our new member to the society of the friends of the Great Old One.” He nodded in the direction of one small robed figure.

Rhiow looked at her pale face and recognized a woman who she’d last seen being walked out of the upstairs toilet in Dagenham’s: Dorothy, who nodded to all the others, wearing a smile that Rhiow suspected was just this side of going small and scared. Beside her, a taller figure, that handsome face showing above the robes: the man who had been kissing her. Rhiow looked down and thought she saw brown wingtips.

“And now we get down to business,” Dagenham said. “The other friends of the Great Old One, the Strong Ones, have done us many favors in past months. Careers have been rescued, personal harms have been avenged, wealth and influence have been showered on us. And the Strong Ones ask so little ofus in return! This month they ask for more than usual… but this week they will give us far more than usual, more than we’ve ever dared to dream. Let’s honor them!”

Everyone in the circle bowed, but it was Dagenham they bowed to. He stood there, his head high, receiving their homage as if he was actually entitled to it. There was something so histrionic, so theatrical, about the gesture, that Rhiow suddenly suspected she understood him as fully as she needed to. The Lone One’s little friends, or sa’Rraah herself, had offered him the one thing that would be sweetest to him: to be a leader, for a change, instead of the one who was forced to follow the rich and powerful and beautiful, arranging their contacts with the news media and picking up what crumbs of gratitude they dropped. Here, among these people, he was more: still a facilitator and a conduit, but one who now stood on the brink of power unimaginable to the people he’d been forced until now to serve.

“This is the night of nights,” Dagenham said. “Now at last the final piece of the puzzle falls into place, and we come into our own…” Under what he was saying, the dark buzzing had fallen into step with the rhythm of his words, reinforcing them, pulsing in time with them, so that the group circled around the stones seemed to start to sway a little in time with the buzzing.

He’s sold, body and soul, Rhiow thought, caught between pity and disgust. Sa’Rraah has him under her paw. Worse: Tepeyollotl the Eater has him. Dagenham already sees himself as King of the World. Yet he hasn’t thought it through. He really must not understand that the position won’t last him past the time when the sky tears open and the darkness floods in. Or he’s convinced himself otherwise. He’s too used to a world where every contract can be renegotiated if your lawyer’s just good enough…

“The Great Old One is with us now,” Dagenham said, his eyes catching the light of the torches as he turned, “here in His strong place: the one who’s lived forever in the old darkness under the hills and behind time. And His friends the Strong Ones are with us, all around us. Can’t you hear them, singing the song of power as they have before? But this time, they sing it differently – this time, more strongly than ever before. Because after what we’ve done for them in these last weeks, and these last few days in particular, they’re finally about to start coming into their own. Because of how we’ve helped them, they will rule the world. We, their friends, we will soon be princes of the Earth, and all the people who’ve been running things forever, telling us what to do forever, will soon find that the old order has changed. We are the new order. The old night has come toput an end to the new day we were promised, the day that hasn’t turned out to be worth having! The great and the powerful have spent four years and endless lives squabbling over something that at the end of the day just doesn’t matter. Now it’s time to turn to other powers, older powers. And one that has the power to truly change the world – “

You have no idea! Rhiow thought. But now we get to the meat of it–

“And now they send their servant – “

From the darkness out at the edge of the shadows came a dark form. Not robed, but all cloaked in a shadow that moved heavily as if she wore one, the Dark Lady came. She was as tall and beautiful and cold as she’d been in Arhu’s revisioning. Her face was half obscured by the darkness around her as if by a veil, strangely recalling the veil she’d worn as the Silent Man and his friends had seen her on that rainy night.

As she slowly came closer, in utter silence, Rhiow and everyone else in her team could immediately feel the spell circle pulse once, awakening, the way a persona-keyed wizardry will pulse in confirmation as the one who designed it comes near. Outside the outermost ring of stones, she stopped, and simply stood there still as a statue.

“Here she is,” Dagenham was saying in a great voice, “the Great Old One’s messenger to us, she who taught us the Rite of the Eater and showed us what to do to make him our friend. She is the one who will open the way for him now, and rest in His darkness forever after! All do her honor, forshe is the one who will free Him, and us, and give us the world!”

All the robed figures bowed, and from one of them came a delighted laugh: a little tinkly voice that brought Rhiow’s ears right around, for she knew it all too well. It instantly brought back to her the feeling of being helpless and upside down, clutched against a bosom all doused in a mixture of cheap perfumes. She was tempted to hiss. But she was distracted from that as she caught a movement in the darkness: a glint of light, the slightest movement. Eyes, eyes under the veil, narrowing at the sound of the laugh. Just a flash of anger, of terror.

And at the same moment, Rhiow heard one word Whispered in her ear. She took the hint.

She fixed all her attention on the Dark Lady, all her intention. Laurel! Rhiow said to her, silently, as forcefully as she could.

All around them the shadows suddenly buzzed and roiled. The ehhif were still bowing, still listening to more of Dagenham’s promises of what the Dark Lady was about to do for them. But she herself stood still, and nothing about her moved but those eyes. They went wide in the dimness, and flickered toward Rhiow: then, hurriedly, away again.

Cousin, said the mind behind the look. Help me!!

The thought was almost a scream, and it was choked off immediately thereafter. The eyes went veiled again. But now Rhiow knew what she needed to know– what she wouldn’t otherwise have dared to think. She’s not as soulsplit as we thought, Rhiow said to the others in shock. The split was why we didn’t read her as a wizard when Arhu revisioned her. But she is one, and she’s trying to come back! Trying to reforge the broken bond, to take her proper being back! Who knew, after all, what desperation in her life had made her try to sever the connection to it in the first place? Who knew what the Lone One had inflicted on her in the attempt to turn her into a weapon? And so very nearly It had succeeded.

But the claw slices both ways, Rhiow thought. The split wasn’t clean! Though the body was gone – suicide, murder, who knew which? – there was still some scrap of willingness to have a body tangled in the estranged soul: enough to allow enacture. So one of sa’Rraah’s little friends whispered in Dagenham’s ear and told him how to find her and use her: the kind of tool you couldn’t make out a whole wizard, alive or dead. She’s what Dagenham’s been using to do Tepeyollotl’s work, with the coaching of his dark Mistress’s pets.

Yet the soul itself hasn’t given up its connection! It’s been trying to come back, to heal the wound, to remake the agreement with the Powers broken after it gave up life and forsook its Oath.

Yet the claw really did slice both ways, and not necessarily in their favor. Until she fully remakes the bond to the Powers, she’s still the Lone One’s claw, not Iau’s. And it came to Rhiow in that moment that seeing this wizard remade, even if she should die in the next moment, was more important than the errand that they originally thought they’d come on.

People, at all costs, we have to keep her from enacting that spell! Rhiow said. She may have a trigger for that wizardry stored in her mind, but it won’t be one she built or put there. Dagenham, or one of these others – they’re the key. The Dark Lady’s just –

A cat’s paw? Helen said. It was a joke, but her mind’s voice was grim.

It’s in one of their minds, Rhiow said. But it needs to be jostled loose. We have one who can See – She caught Arhu’s eyes across the circle, where they glinted ever so faintly in the torchlight – and one who can Hear —

I understand you, Hwaith said.

Let’s see how this unfolds for a few moments more, Rhiow said, watching Dagenham. As soon as they make any move that looks like the activation of this spell –

I think we can find a way to disrupt them a little, Helen said.

“And now comes the time of gifts,” Dagenham was saying to his circle. “As we give to the Strong Ones, and through them to the Great Old One, so He gives to us. Now, at this final moment, commitment means most, and will be most rewarded. Who will give himself to the Great Old One so that the world can be changed?”

And suddenly everyone in the circle was looking at Dolores.

“Or herself,” Dagenham said.

“…Give?” Dolores said, looking around her in confusion. “What do you mean? I mean, I promised to let them into my life, you showed me the words to say – “ She looked over at Ray.

“Yes, I did,” Ray said. “And here’s your chance to achieve greatness of a kind you’d never have had a chance to achieve in your career, which frankly wouldn’t have had that long to run anyway… considering what’s going to happen tonight.”

Her mouth dropped open: she glanced around her, now, like someone realizing for the first time that she had been led into a trap, and by someone she’d made the mistake of trusting. “Ray, what do you mean, I thought that you and I – “

“Yes, you did,” Ray said. His voice was astonishingly casual. “I tried to explain to you earlier that plans had changed and that we were discussing an entirely different kind of immortality now. Something much better than just the silver screen… something a whole lot more permanent. Anyone who gives herself to the Great Old One now will live forever in ways that no one alive can understand. You’ll be worshipped, and adored… through Him… by whatever beings remain alive after tonight.”

Dolores’s eyes went wide. “You do it yourself then, if you’re so hot on the idea!” she cried, and whirled to run for the door. But before she could move, the two robed figures on either side of her had her by the arms and were restraining her where she was.

Her screams fell with surprisingly little effect into the dead weight of the air, as if something was pressing down on the space, smothering them. Here we go… Rhiow thought. Sif? Hold yourself ready – I’m going to have to construct something on the fly.

Say the word.

From across the circle, Helen said, It’s all right, Aufwi, let me down —

I’d nearly forgotten you were up there. Where have you been keeping your mass?

It’s no big deal, I’ll show you later. Give us the high sign when you’re ready, Rhi —

“No! Ray, no, why are you, what are you doing, why are you just standing there, help me, I don’t want to do this!” She was screaming now. Most of the people standing around the circle simply looked at her. And Dagenham moved the thing he was holding two-handed into one of his hands, and reached into his robe with another, and came out with something that was just as black, but glinted in the torchlight.

It was a short sharp slice of obsidian, razory-keen. He passed it to the robed figure standing next to him: and the figure reached out a shapely hand to take it from Dagenham, and turned toward Dolores, and laughed… that tinkly little laugh.

Rhiow fluffed up in rage and horror as Anya Harte advanced slowly on Dolores. All sharp edges, that voice had been at the restaurant and the party, always looking for someplace to put the knife in. And now she had a place. It’s as we thought: she was behind what happened to Dolores at the party. And what she realized she hadn’t finished there, now she’ll finish here, as a sideshow to the main event… and a sop to her jealousy. Well, we’ll see about that —

“How blind did you have to be,” Anya said as she came closer and closer to the struggling Dolores, “not to see that Ray and I weren’t going to stop being an item just because some fan magazine said we were? You really shouldn’t believe everything you read. You have to know that the studiocame down on him after some rumors got around about here…” She laughed again. “But Ray’s too much his own man to toe the line. Of course he was going to pretend to be doing it at a party full of industry types. But off the record…. nothing has changed.”

She was almost within arm’s length now, and the torchlight glinted redly off the hair-thin edge of the obsidian knife. “And if you think a dim little piece like you is going to distract Ray from me for a minute, even if the world is about to end or whatever tomorrow, then you… think…wrong.”

She lifted the knife. Dolores, gasping in shock, watched its upward arc as Anya lifted it with a dreadful smile on her face. Rhiow glanced over at Sif, caught the answering glint of fire in her eyes, reached back into her mind for the shieldspell she’d been readying to lay the groundwork for what would follow —

And from the darkness came a sound that brought all heads around, even Dagenham’s. It was a low, moaning, rumbling sound that scaled slowly up into a roar, and then past that into a long, furious, bubbling scream. And out of the darkness, into the horrified silence that fell, into the torchlight, came slowly stepping something earth-colored, four-legged, long and low, with slowly twitching tail and eyes that unnaturally concentrated the torches’ light. Every ehhif in the circle stared, frozen in shock, as the biggest California mountain lion they had ever seen – a massive dun shape with dark muzzle and paws — stalked out of the darkness and into the ring of stones, and stood there, just shy of the spell circle, with eyes of green fire locked on Anya Harte.

The lion screamed again. The sound was matched by more ehhif screams, male and female, as the huge tan-and-dark shape leapt clear over the spell-circle and came down hard on the far side, between the rings of stones.

Rhiow stared in wonder, caught a flicker of those eyes. Rhi, their owner said, laughing grimly, what’s the matter? Don’t you recognize me when I’m not wearing Elie Saab? And Helen Walks Softly pushed herself up from her landing crouch and made for Anya Harte and Dolores.

The circle broke, ehhif fleeing into the dark in all directions, one torch falling over. One of the ehhif holding Dolores let go of her and fled. The other pulled her out of the circle a short distance, followed by Anya Harte in a flurry of swirling robes, a brief, violent tangle. Arhu, Hwaith, Rhiow cried silently, look for the word, listen for it— !

All the minds around her were in turmoil, ready for rummaging. Rhiow looked around for Dagenham. When things started to happen, he’d stepped back hastily into the darkness: now she spotted him heading for the door —

There already, Urruah said from the shadows down that way. One of the robed figures who’d made it to the door ahead of the others was yanking on it fruitlessly, unable to budge it: Urruah had spoken to the door and its frame and convinced them to be one piece for the moment.

The lion-scream behind them broke up the brief struggle between Anya, Dolores and the acolyte who’d been holding Dolores still. Anya and the other robed figure now fled into the darkness in two different directions: Dolores fell. Helen leapt past her, after Anya, batted at her with one huge paw, missed –

Hwaith! Rhiow called. Arhu! What have you got, there has to be something–

Nothing, Rhiow! It’s not a word –

Can’t See anything, Arhu said, sounding distressed. Wait, Rhiow, look out, Dagenham — !

Helen skidded, turned, leapt toward him, but not quite fast enough. Dagenham was running back toward the circle, with that small dark object in his hand. He threw it—

The dark thing flew across the circle and came down on the last spot, the one still-empty receptor site, drawn there as certainly and immediately as steel to the magnet. It looked like it had been a heart once. Now it was a stone. It hit the spell diagram and the stone cracked open lke an egg. Sluggish black blood gushed out—

Rhi. The strings— !

As quickly as if a switch had been thrown, the hyperstrings all around them were bending inward, writhing toward the stones as they’d seemed to have been writhing away from them before. This is it! Hwaith said. This is when the one from outside’s supposed to come through –

He flung himself at the strings. Not on my watch! Aufwi!

Aufwi threw himself into the tangle of strings on the opposite side of the circle, and, like Hwaith, began grabbing clawfuls of every nearby string and pulling them out of their present configurations. The purpose wasn’t so much manipulation toward a specific effect as wholesale disruption, the kind meant to result in a gatecrash. Rhiow watched them with astonishment and fear, for what they were doing was beyond dangerous, as they tried to force the kind of result that a worldgate technician normally went to all possible lengths to avoid. But these two were the ones best suited to attempt a gate shutdown under circumstances like these: both expert in the LA area gates and the local conditions, though they might be looking at the problem from six decades apart.

But it wasn’t working. The hyperstrings continued to writhe together, weaving into a gate structure as fast as Hwaith and Aufwi ripped them apart. Despite everything they could do, the spell that the Dark Lady had built was enacting. The night-swathed shell of her soul stood like a pillar, unable to move, the power flowing out of it, driving the spell that could not work without her —

Dagenham watched it happen, laughing. A second later he went down hard just outside the outer ring of stones as Helen came down on top of him and with one huge paw batted him unconscious. But his unconsciousness made no difference whatsoever. The spell kept working. The hyperstrings were knitting together into a gate with a structure like nothing Rhiow had ever seen before, and down all the strings of it, an ugly throbbing darkness was running…

Helen, forget them! Rhiow said. She’s the key. She’s got to get into a body and remake her connection with the Powers — take her wizardry back. Then this will fail —

One of us could share bodies with her, Aufwi said silently as he kept ripping at the forming gate. It’s not easy to do in a hurry — but if one of us slipped out of body and into someone else’s for a few moments, it would leave a body untenanted, and she could remake the Oath –

Rhiow’s tail lashed. The shock of finding herself in a Person’s body might leave her unable to do what needed doing —

Forget it. She needs a human body, Helen said. Mine won’t work for her: it’s too different. And though I can think right now of a way to give her one – she looked over her shoulder toward Anya Harte, who was struggling with the door like all the others — it’d would play straight into the Lone One’s hands. We need another way —

As Rhiow looked desperately around her, over her shoulder she saw something that briefly froze her heart…until she realized what else it might mean. Sprawled on the ground lay Dolores, blood seeping out from under her – none of it, fortunately, spilled anywhere near the spell circle: Iau only knew what that would have done. Rhiow ran over to the ehhif, touched her pulse point with a paw.

Tell me she’s not dead! Urruah said, running over to join Rhiow. .

She’s in shock, Rhiow said. Not stabbed too deeply: I think we can save her. But first she can save the Dark Lady, and us. Quick, get her over there!

A premade levitation spell picked Dolores up bodily and whisked her through the air to deposit her at the Dark Lady’s feet. She did not stir, did not look down, but she was trembling. Whatever had locked her soul-shell into obedience to Dagenham’s wishes was getting stronger as the black gate started to materialize in the center of the stone circles.

All we need’s a soul-conduit, Rhiow said, setting up the basic spell in her mind and starting to weave the words in the Speech into a mockup of the “silver cord” that expressed the connection between an ehhif’s body and its spirit. She had had to do this occasionally in her work down in the subway tunnels, when she’d found an ehhif dying and needed to buy him or her time until more appropriate help could be summoned. It wasn’t an involved wizardry, but she’d never envisioned using it this way before. Never mind. First implant the body end – It was difficult work, convincing a body whose own soul hadn’t quite left that it needed to host another: but Dolores was safely unconscious and in no condition to argue the point. Reluctantly the cord rooted. Now the other end – Rhiow took hold of the other end of the cord with her mind, reached up to the Dark Lady with it –

The second it touched Laurel, Rhiow felt as if she’d been hit by lightning: transfixed, in terrible pain, unable to move. The Dark Lady had been surrounded with a shell meant to prevent this very possibility. And behind Rhiow, the dark gate kept forming. The dirt of the floor inside the stones started to fade, go dark, opening a window into something else, a fathomless empty space of cold — Aufwi was blasted back from the almost-formed gate structure as if it was some living thing that had shaken him off its black hide. Hwaith was hanging on –

Sif!

Here, Siffha’h said, and a moment later Rhiow was struck by lightning again: but this time it was lightning she understood and sympathized with, a blast of sheer wizardly power that ran through her, down the cord to Dolores’s body, up the cord to the Dark Lady. All around her a skin of white fire formed, eating its way inward. She screamed –

Then vanished. Rhiow, released by the forces Siffha’h had channeled through her, fell over, unable to move.

Beside her, Dolores moaned.

“Come on,” Urruah said, the first time any of them had spoken aloud in so long. “Come on!”

Behind them, the dark gate was nearly complete. Hwaith was hanging on to the last normal hyperstring strands, trying to keep the interface from forming, yowling in pain and effort. But he couldn’t hold it. A second later he was knocked away from the gate and hurled through the air to smash into one of the larger stones. Limp, he fell at the foot of it, didn’t move.

Rhiow struggled to get to her feet, fell back again, unable. The darkness from the gate was spreading all through the cavern, now. And as the darkness started to flood out of the circle toward them, something else began to stir in the ground under their feet. A rumbling… a shaking…

The earth began to quake.

The screams of the ehhif by the door suggested that they were no longer quite so eager to linger here to meet the Great Old One. The torches fixed in the ground fell over, one by one, as the shaking got worse. Dislodged clods of earth began falling from the roof. There was no light, now, but the burning dark forming and spreading from inside the gate locus, and across the cavern, a white fire in the shape of a black and white Person, sitting still, concentrating, pouring out power.“Come on, Laurel!” Urruah was shouting in the Speech. “You know what you need to do, what you want to do!”

The noise was starting to build up in the cave as the shaking got worse, as bigger chunks of the ceiling started to fall, as the ehhif screamed and beat on the door, trapped and in terror of their lives. The earth was starting to roar as Helen had roared, the low sound of a great cat, hungry, bending over its prey, jaws opening. Rhiow, dazed and deafened, kept working to push herself to her feet. Hwaith, who’s looking after him, and what about Arhu, and Aufwi, and Helen, Urruah, you have to get them out —

But the voice that answered her was not Urruah, or Hwaith.

“In – Life’s – Name,” it said, slowly and with great effort, “and for Life’s sake – I say that I will use the Art – for nothing but – the service of that Life…”

She trailed off. The hill roared around them.“Come on,” Urruah said, and “Come on,” said Helen, “come on, cousin, you can do it, come on — !”

Dolores’s body with Laurel’s spirit in it was gasping for air. “Come on, Sif, push it,” Urruah was saying, “Helen, quick, her oxygen levels, I’ll hold that bleeding – “

“I will guard growth – and ease – ease pain – I will fight to preserve – what grows – lives well in its own – own way…”

She trailed off again. The ground under them all shook. The dark from the gate was getting closer, and Rhiow could feel it, a cold that burned worse than vacuum, because at least vacuum was in the real world and had a temperature, and this had nothing, was nothing, Nothing Itself, coming for them as it had wanted to forever–

Rhiow pushed herself up onto her forefeet, all she could manage.“Laurel! Come on!”

“Change no – no object or – creature unless its growth and life – or – or – “

“ – the system!”

“The system of which it is part – are threatened – “ A long, long pause. And then a last gasp.

“Laurel!”

The ceiling was starting to come apart above them, now. The shimmer of a forcefield that Urruah had erected was holding the downfalling chunks away for the moment, but it wouldn’t last: the cold blackness from the gate was eating at the edges of it. Not until I’m on my feet, Rhiow thought, and hauled her hind legs under her, and pushed herself up, and wobbled, and fell down, and pushed herself up again. I am a Person, and if I die here I’ll do it standing up before the Queen as befits one of Her children –

“ – To these ends – in the practice of my Art – I will put aside fear for courage – “ Another gasp, a long pause. “—And death for Life – “

The ceiling came down on them, stopping the ehhifs’ screams. The forcefield held, but it was buckling. Sif’s light was going out. Around them, the walls of the cavern were flowing like water, running downhill toward them –

“ – when it is right to do so – “

Something pushed itself against Rhiow, supporting her in the dark. She leaned on it, pushing herself straighter. Across the circle, Sif’s light was dimming, going out. Rhiow glanced to see what she was leaning on: caught a last glimpse of bronze eyes before the light went out and the earth’s roaring all around them drowned out everything else.

“Until Universe’s end — !”

It was almost a cry of triumph.

And then everything happened at once.

A great rent of light tore down the middle of the black gate, and something like lightning came lashing out of it, lighting the whole cavern in frozen strobe-flashes, long-seeming moments full of slabs of earth and stone held still in mid-fall. The black wizardry in the center of the ring of stones went up in an eye-hurting pulse of fire and deconstructed itself in a breath’s space, lines of light eating themselves away into darkness, finally the outermost containing circle erasing itself until there was no light left in the cavern anywhere but the faint shimmer of the forcefield that was still keeping the ceiling off them, but wouldn’t for much longer. “Out,” Rhiow yowled, “everybody out!!”

Her own transit spell was lying ready in her mind as always, but with someone leaning against her and no more likely than she was to be able to move in a hurry, Rhiow spoke her transit locus to twice its normal size and turned the spell loose, hoping Hwaith’s tail was close to his body. In a roar of downplunging pressure, the roof’s final collapse, everything went dark –

…And after what seemed forever, light again. At least, normal night seemed bright compared to where they had been, and the far more awful darkness they’d just seen. Rhiow looked up from under some trees on the slope they’d climbed what seemed a lifetime earlier, glimpsing through the branchesof the shaking pine trees the dusty, dirty, blessedly light-polluted sky above Los Angeles, all aglow with grimy white streetlight-glow.

Rhiow staggered to her feet, wobbling. Her nerves didn’t seem to be working right, but after what she’d just been through, that was understandable. “Hwaith – “

He was sitting just by her again, a little hunched.“I’m all right,” he said. “Well, not the shoulder. I hit that stone pretty hard. Later we’ll fix it – “

The two of them staggered and limped three-legged partway up the hill, where they saw a faint light glowing. It was a wizardlight, and under it Urruah and Aufwi were sitting, and Arhu was bent down licking Siffha’h’s head urgently. Beside them, Helen Walks Softly was bending over the unconscious form of Dolores, putting pressure on her chest wound. Rhiow went up to them, and her eyes met Helen’s.

“Laurel – “

Helen shook her head, smoothing the dirty hair away from Dolores’s face. “The minute she was a wizard again and in her right mind,” she said, “she finished what she’d come for and then died properly to go settle matters with the Powers.” She sighed. “The cord’s broken. We’ll sing her home later. But first we’ll get this poor lady down to thehospital.”

Hwaith, for his part, had gone on past Rhiow up the hill, limping up to where it stopped very suddenly.“Wow,” he said.

Rhiow went up to join him. The cavern had fallen in completely, and taken most of Elwin Dagenham’s house with it: only the front porch and the driveway remained, and behind the house, a cracked swimming pool tilted over on its side, from which water was pouring into the crater where the hill and its cavern had been. Every few breaths, little cascades of dirt fell down into the crater from what remained of the hillside around, for the ground under them was still trembling slightly: doubtless there would be aftershocks later.

“None of this is going to be very stable,” Rhiow said. “We should get off this, and get back to the Silent Man’s… see how he’s doing there.”

She turned away from the newly-formed crater and looked down the hill again. Aufwi was sitting by Urruah, looking a little dazed, but otherwise all right. Arhu was still licking the prone Siffha’h’s head… until he stopped.

“What??” he said.

The others all looked at him. Arhu didn’t sound afraid: just puzzled. Then he sat bolt upright. “What??”

He looked down at Sif, who opened her eyes.“What?” she said to Arhu after after a moment.

Arhu simply vanished.

Rhiow and Hwaith looked at each other.“Don’t ask me,” Rhiow said. “I want a drink. And a bath. Let’s go: he’ll explain himself to us soon enough.”

One after another, the People and Helen vanished from the shattered hillside; where, after a decent interval, now that the cats were gone, the evening birds recovered their voices and their composure and began to sing.

Down in the flatter part of Los Angeles, in the residential neighborhoods just off Wilshire, the earthquake had initially been received with the usual combination of terror and resigned annoyance. In the stores that ran up and down Wilshire and the apartments in the side streets, when things started walking off shelves and windows started jittering and shattering in their frames, people ran out into the street or stood in streetside doorways, waiting to see how bad it would get and how far they needed to run.

The quake would later be referred to in some parts of the neighborhood as“that really long one”, as its severity had increased slowly over several minutes, and it had reached a point where people started getting really frightened and the screaming broke out from those who’d run into the streets. Some of those who weren’t entirely focused on the ugly and insistent way the earth was moving also noticed a strange cold that settled over the evening, and more than the usual amount of dust kicked up, so that everything got very dim for a while.

But then suddenly something broke, something changed– a shift in the whole atmosphere, the way a thunderstorm changes the whole feel of the air when it finally breaks and lets loose with the lightning. This effect was particularly noticeable down by the corner of Wilshire and South Curzon, where a lot of people who’d run into the park were sitting out on the open ground waiting for the shaking to stop. And it did – but not before something else happened.

Some of them thought lightning actually did strike the small Page Museum facility across the street, and the little fenced-off patch of open ground next to it. Lightning wasn’t unheard of during earthquakes… but what followed struck even the seasoned Angelenos watching as unusual.

The open ground had a low wooden palisade around it, just enough to keep people from falling into the sticky ooze inside. Though there was no light or fire or anything that could normally have been associated with an explosion, nonetheless an explosion happened, throwing mud and water and other noisome-smelling muck for many yards out onto the streets. As usual, the curiosity of a few people overcame their concern over any possible danger, and they ran across Curson Avenue to see what had happened.

The sight of a huge reptilian form shouldering its way up out of the very disturbed contents of the La Brea Tar Pits made most of these people stop right where they were and stand very still to watch… for even the least scientifically-minded of them understood that this was absolutely the reverse of the way things could normally be expected to go. The massive creature was plainly a tyrannosaurus of some kind – an impression reinforced by the fact that they couldn’t see its striking orange, red and yellow stripes, these being almost completely covered by tar.

The man who’d ventured closest to this apparition while it was still standing in the pit and trying fruitlessly to scrape the tar off itself was absolutely sure about the tyrannosaurus part, especially when – while looking around itself as if trying to figure out where it was — it noticed him noticing it, and bent down over him. For a terrible moment the man thought his curiosity was about to be the end of him. As he found himself staring into huge toothy jaws nearly the length of his upper body, the man – a gas station attendant from Pasadena who’d taken the Red Car into town for a night out at the local bars – wondered if he was finally going to find fame and fortune in a manner he’d never contemplated.

The tyrannosaurus, bent down even closer and fixed him with one golden eye.“This is most unfortunate,” it said in a gentle and cultured voice, “most unfortunate. I seem to have disrupted something, but it seems also to have disrupted me. Could you kindly point me, sir, in the direction of Hollywood?”

The man pointed.

“My thanks,” said the tyrannosaurus, walked away up Curson for a few strides, then said something under its breath that the man didn’t understand, and vanished.

The gas station attendant stood there for a moment, flummoxed. Then he muttered to himself,“Typical. Everybody wants to be a star…”

In the Silent Man’s house, it was as if nothing whatsoever had happened: not so much as a glass had walked off the shelves in the kitchen pantry. When Rhiow and the group returned, they found the Silent Man rather more disturbed than this than they’d expected. The neighbors’ places all have cracks in the sidewalks and the walls, he said. You should do something about the sidewalk, anyway… treat it the same. Otherwise people are going to think I’m even weirder than they think I am already…

Urruah laughed at that.“We’ll take care of it.”

So what happened?

“That’s going to take a night’s worth of telling,” Rhiow said. “We didn’t exactly get out without a scratch… but our problems are small compared to what we stopped from happening.” She flopped down on the floor, glad to take the weight off her hind legs: they were still bothering her. “And we’ve brought you another house guest, though only temporarily. After her injury has a little time to stabilize, we’ll need to install some false memories in her to match what the authorities will find once they start cleaning up the site at Dagenham’s.”

“It’ll make sensational reading,” Urruah said, “we can tell you that much. The scandal rags will have a field day with it… at least, the parts they can figure out…”

A sudden chorus of shocked yowling went up from outside, from some guest-People who were visiting the buffet. The Silent Man rolled his eyes. They’ve been doing that ever since the excitement started, he said. Everybody’s nerves are on edge. I’ll go see what the problem is now…

He went out the French doors. Rhiow, now that she had a moment to do so, gave Helen an amused look.“You might have mentioned that Helen Walks Softly wasn’t just a tribal name…!”

Helen smiled.“No name without a reason…”

“But this is why mass isn’t an issue for you,” Urruah said, “at least not in the wizardly sense. You’re a shapewalker; it’s a whole different level of matter management, and it comes to you naturally…”

Helen nodded.“There’s a question among the elders in my band,” she said. “Am I a were-puma, or a puma-woman?” She shrugged. “I’ll take it up with the Powers some day. Right now there’s too much going on…”

The Silent Man came back inside and stood by his desk for a moment, looking rattled: the first time Rhiow could remember seeing him wearing such an expression. I’m sorry, he said, rubbing his face. But there appears to be a dinosaur in the back yard. I assume he’s something to do with you?

Urruah and Hwaith and Aufwi and Helen and Rhiow all looked at each other. A moment later, a huge saurian face was looking in one of the French doors, and Arhu jumped down off his head and slipped inside, shouldering the door open so that Ith could get at least his head in.

“I found him on Hollywood Boulevard, asking directions,” Arhu said, “and got him out of there before too much damage was done.” He shrugged his tail. “He was right over by the Chinese. They’ll probably think he was some kind of promotion.”

Rhiow got up again and went over to the door, gazing up at Ith.“What on Earth brought you all the way back here?” she said.

“It was the tablets,” Ith said, sounding very somber.

“What about them? You could just have mind-spoken me, Ith, told me what you’ve found, you didn’t have to come all the way back here – “

“I did,” he said. “I did not dare even whisper what I’ve found: I didn’t dare take the chance that a word or two might leak out into the space between times and worlds. But whatever has been done tonight, Rhiow, it has not been enough. You are not finished. There is one thing yet to be done.”

“What??”

He pushed his head in the door and put it right down by Rhiow’s.

“Join forces with the Lone Power,” he whispered. “And end the world.”

The Big Meow: Chapter Twelve

Everyone looked at Ith in profound concern, not least the Silent Man.

You’re going to have to forgive me, he said, glancing over at Rhiow, but I thought things were pretty much handled.

“Well,” Rhiow said, unnerved. “We were about to start dealing with that issue. What we saw tonight suggests that there’s still considerable unfinished business. We stopped the initial incursion… or rather, it was stopped.” She looked over at Ith. “I think you may have had more to do with that than any of us expected. But the timings laid out in the tablets we saw suggested that the worst is yet to come. And what happened tonight – “

“Wasn’t quite bad enough?” Arhu said as he clambered up onto Ith’s back and walked up to sit on top of his head.

The Silent Man watched this performance with a slightly cockeyed look. You’ve got to forgive me, but I had the idea that cats and lizards didn’t usually like each other much.

“They’re twins,” Urruah said. “Separated at birth.”

The Silent Man blinked.

“He means that mostly in the spiritual sense,” Rhiow said. “Someone will explain it to you eventually, as far as we understand it, anyway. But what Arhu’s saying is that, despite everything we went through, we got off rather easily… which confirms that the worst is still to be dealt with.Ith, I take it after Aufwi told us where to look, you did find the remaining tablets – “

“I did,” Ith said. He had hunkered down, now, with his head and just the tops of his shoulders pushed into the room through the open French doors, and was more or less wearing the sprawled-out Arhu like a hat. “Some of them were in very bad state and had to be reconstructed, but they were willing enough to be reminded of what they had been once. Indeed, they were eager to become what they had been, even if only temporarily. They were full of urgency to be read. But when I read them…” He trailed off. “I did not know what to make of what I was seeing.” Even as Ith leaned on his elbows, those long slender claws of his were scissoring together, clenching, flexing, clenching again in great nervousness.

“Elder brother,” Rhiow said, “what is it? What did you find?”

Ith’s voice dropped again to a whisper, and despite the awful tension of the moment, Rhiow couldn’t help but be tempted toward laughter by a whisper that nonetheless filled the whole room. “The tablets said that darkness must fight darkness, that only the dark can save us: that wizards must turnto their oldest enemy, and only so will the worlds be saved…”

Rhiow’s tail lashed. “Turn to her how?” she said, horrified. It was completely counterintuitive, utterly impossible, almost certainly a lie. At least that’s the conclusion that reasonable thought would lead you to… “It’s some trap,” she said to the others, unable to believe anything else. “Some stratagem of Hers, to get us to fall in with Her plans and do exactly the opposite of whatever will stop Her.”

Urruah was sitting with eyes slitted, very still.“It’s always been a favorite tactic of the Lone One,” he said, “to get wizards to do Her dirty work for Her.”

“But She knows we’d know that,” Arhu said. “She might think we’re annoying, but when has She ever thought we were stupid?”

“You’re sure about the translation?” Siffha’h said, looking at Ith a little suspiciously.

“There was no mistaking it. Look for yourself.”

A moment later, replicas of the uptime tablets and annotations of their carvings had appeared in the middle of the living room floor. Everyone gathered around to study them. But Ith was right about the words, insofar as the Speech sufficed to read them, and right about the absolute flatness of the language in the inscriptions, and the inability to construe it in any other way. The carvings that ornamented the texts even looked a little hasty, as if the ancient artisan was unnerved by what he or she had been carving. With reason… Rhiow thought. If the artist was a wizard, this message can’t have made any more sense to him or her than to us…

Helen Walks Softly was sitting on the floor in jeans and an LAPD sweatshirt with her legs curled under her, and now she leaned over the glowing simulacra of the carvings on the tablets, gazing at them thoughtfully.“Isn’t this interesting,” she said, and tapped a finger on one of the reconstructed tablets. “See this?”

Rhiow paced over to look at the carven character Helen was indicating. There seemed to be two heads embedded in it, one a cat’s and one a serpent’s, each with some ornamental scrollwork surrounding it. But then she looked more closely, and saw that the Feathered Serpent was wearing a collar adorned with cat’s heads, and the Great Cat had a collar that looked like a snake…

“An ocelocoatl,” Helen said, “and a Chan-Bahlum. When they turn up at all, theyturn uptogether a lot.”

Rhiow glanced at Arhu and Ith.“Maybe now we know why,” Rhiow said. “It’s been becoming plain that the two of them go a long way back. Or about six months, depending on how you look at it…”

“But that’s not the whole point, Rhiow. Look at the two of them. They’re right next to this – “

Rhiow peered at the carved character Helen was indicating. At first glance it looked like the the Black Leopard’s head, with a constellation of little leopard heads around it. “Now what?” Rhiow muttered. “Is that the Devourer in the Darkness having kittens or something? Isn’t He a tom?”

“Look closer, Rhi. It’s not Tepeyollotl: He’s on the far side of this carving. This is sa’Rraah, with her little friends all around her – right next to the Ocelocoatl, our feline-saurian fusion. And they’re looking at Tepeyollotl together.”

“Not with the friendliest expressions I’ve ever seen, either,” Urruah said.

“Not arguing that point,” Rhiow said, “I still don’t know if I’m going to trust the fate of all known universes to some artist who was practicing carving snarls…”

Siffha’h now came over to look at the carving, especially the part that Helen had identified as sa’Rraah and the shadow-imps. “You know,” Siffha’h said, “Herself’s little jackals were sure down there in strength in that cavern.”

“True,” Rhiow said, bristling. “Something I was trying to avoid thinking about at the time.”

“But that’s the problem, Rhi. Why weren’t they doing anything?”

That gave Rhiow pause. In the cavern, Rhiow had dismissed it the shadow-imps’ nonintervention as a momentary condition, something to be grateful for as long as it lasted: and then everything had gone crazy and she hadn’t had time to spare them further consideration. But now she thought, They should’ve been attacking us. What was holding them back?

“I don’t have any answer for you on that count,” Rhiow said. “But after reviewing what happened, I don’t see that we have any cause to relax at the moment.” She licked her nose. “That wizardry, black as it was, executed before poor Laurel managed to remake her Oath and withdraw enacture from it. The calcified heart that Dagenham threw into it was the product of the last ceremonial murder they needed – the one that would enable the entry of Tepeyollotl into our spaces. That kicked the spell into execution, though we were able to disrupt its running somewhat, and the weaving of the incursion worldgate.” She looked over at Hwaith and Aufwi. “You two were instrumental in that. And then Ith arrived –“

“Though not where intended,” Ith said, regretful. “When I had the data I needed, I was trying to transit directly to your location. But the executing spell was spitting out so much energy that no transit could have arrived here without being deranged. And along with the warping of local hyperstring structure by the gate that was attempting to form – and then being shredded –“ He scraped for a moment at a smear of tar on one long wrist that he and Arhu hadn’t managed to spell off on the way back. “My transit was knocked a hundred yards or so off target. Fortunately the built-inoffset function cut in so that I did not materialize inside a crowd of upset humans…”

“I was half hoping that the sudden physical presence here of a being so senior in the middle of that spell, even at a distance, could have so completely changed the local running conditions that the spell would exhaust all the energy pumped into it by the serial murders,” Rhiow said. “But theWhisperer tells me that the disruption just wasn’t sufficient. Unfortunately, my cousins, a spell always works, and this one intends to do just that. It’ll try to complete before the end of the date cycle it was tuned to – the dates that we found in the first tablets.”

“Meaning tonight,” Helen said.

“Late tonight, yes. It can’t do it exactly where the spell was started: the local space has been too deranged by the destruction of the cavern. What we have to do now is plot out all the places nearby where the locus seems likely to reroot, stake them out with spell-sensors, and be ready to move when the spell tries to finish executing.”

“Probably the place where a gate has rooted most strongly in recent times,” Siffha’h said.

Rhiow sighed.“Working that out is going to take yet more time away from what we really need to be doing. Which is trying to figure out some way to keep this world and all its surrounding space from being torn apart when the spell finishes running…”

She fell silent for a moment, for the problem was truly rather bigger than that. Everything we had wasn’t enough just now, Rhiow thought. We assumed we were going to be able to stop the spell completely and prevent the Outside’s incursion that way… and failed. So what will we have tonight that we didn’t have a few hours ago? And when is one of these guys going to call me on this? Because I can’t be the only one that this problem has occurred to, and I don’t see how what Ith has brought us is going to make any difference…

“Rhi,” Hwaith said, “why not be a little more proactive? Why let Tepeyollotl and the Lone One pick the ground that suits them? Force the issue.”

She looked over at him, bemused.“How, exactly?”

He was looking at Auwfi with his whiskers forward.“Take advantage of local circumstances. Get our local long-term, allegedly fixed gate to do what it always wants to do anyway.”

Aufwi’s eyes opened, and he dropped his jaw in a big grin, and he and Hwaith said in unison, “Get uprooted and move around…”

“We’ll pull up the fixed gate and put it someplace where the ground suits us,” Hwaith said, “and then pump it so full of energy that the spell won’t have any choice but to execute there.”

“Ideally,” Arhu said, “somewhere mostly away from ehhif, so that we don’t have to worry about a lot of collateral damage.”

“Plenty of empty hillsides around here…” Hwaith said.

Rhiow put her rightside whiskers forward in ironic amusement at the sound of toms contemplating doing what they secretly loved best: destroying things with impunity. But truly it’s not a bad idea… “The concept has merit,” she said.

“Great. And then what?” Siffha’h said, and yawned.

Rhiow knew what, or rather knew what she didn’t know, and was about to speak up at last because she had no other option. But then she became aware of Urruah sitting like a statue at the edge of the reconstruction of the uptime tablets — his tail curled around his toes, his head bent down, and staying so still that Rhiow was wondering whether he had dozed off. But after a moment he spoke. “Ith,” he said. “Hheh’len. What do you make of that?”

They both looked at the spot he had been gazing, a place at the edge of the last clay-tablet fragment in one row. There was another serpent figure there, the front part of it twisted around in several tightly-coiled S shapes, and underneath it a peculiar funnel-shaped figure, with a coiled and back-flexed end.“What does that say?” Urruah said, leaning down further and staring at the characters next to the funnel shape.

Helen leaned over and studied the characters.“It’s something about how the Nine-Wind God comes to the place of the serpent rope – “

“But look at the picture,” Urruah said. “Everybody, Rhi, look at it. If you didn’t know what you were drawing – or trying to make a picture of it just from somebody’s description, maybe not a terribly good description either – doesn’t that look like a rough schematic of the throat of a worldgate? Look how it bends back there – that’s almost the Klein-bottle rationalization that we use to represent the schematic in 2D – “

“And look what’s inside the funnel,” Helen said. “Another one. A little tiny one…”

Very slowly Urruah lifted his head and looked at Rhiow.

Her eyes started to widen. And I thought I was seeing typical tommish let’s-destroy-stuff business going on before! “Oh, no,” Rhiow said. “No, Urruah. No chance! If you think that just because of a little thing like the world possibly ending — ”

“It doesn’t have to end, Rhi!” Urruah said. “Look at it! A little open-throated claudication stuck into a gate’s patency locus. We know perfectly well from wizardly theory what will happen when we do this — ”

“We think we do,” Rhiow shouted at him, “because gate theory also tells us perfectly clearly why that this is something we should never ever do! If you put a working claudication through an active worldgate, the eversion reaction will rip spacetime apart on a massive scale –“

“Or when in the vicinity of an equivalent rip of roughly equal proportions, with careful management,” Urruah said, “mesh with and evert the corresponding eversion so that the two cancel each other out.”

He was looking over at Hwaith and Aufwi now. Both of them were acquiring the same look of rapidly growing and truly terrifying interest, made far worse because each of them was contemplating how wonderful it would be to have a good reason to do something that was normally a gate technician’s worst nightmare. “Urruah, you are out of your vhai’d mind!” Rhiow said. “’With careful management?’ You’re contemplating constructing a gate adjustment of this complexity and magnitude on the fly? Because there’s no way to judge the actual forces or qualities of the incursion until it happens– “

“Of course there’s a way. We already have some indicators,” Urruah said. “From the earlier gating that failed! Sure, this time the scalars will be bigger, because Ith won’t be falling into the middle of everything without warning. But we know roughly how the incursion gate will build itself.”

“So we root the pumped-up LA gate where we want it – “ Aufwi said.

Hwaith’s tail was lashing. “And we build a pocket claudication with a lot of power wound up inside it, tailored so that when it’s pushed through the LA gate, the eversion is on a close order of force to the incursion event – “

“And then when the incursion starts right in front of us, which it’ll have no choice to do, we feed the claudication into the live gate, and when the eversion starts, we push it into the incursion locus, and… blooey!”

Rhiow was trying to keep her tail from revealing her inmost thoughts.‘Blooey.’ Sweet Iau, what am I going to do with these three?

“But Rhi, you haven’t heard the best thing about this!”

“I haven’t?”

He ignored her irony.“The other effect associated with an eversion, the other reason this is such a bad thing to do! It inflicts dimensional quantum outrage on all of hyperstring structure throughout a given physical reality, sensitizing it to such eversions so that they can never happen again. If this was just a regular gate eversion, it would make worldgating impossible right across all the universes affected. But in this case, it’s not regular gatings that would become impossible, but the kind of unnatural fusion gating that tried to happen in the cavern. Our sheaf of universes would be immunized against this kind of thing forever more!”

At first hearing the concept sounded attractive, but Rhiow was feeling more ragged by the moment and was beginning to doubt her analytical abilities.“Ruah, there’s no way the San Andreas fault could fail to trigger with the forces that would be discharged here. The earlier earthquake would be nothing to this. And I’m leaving aside the effects on the ocean and the atmosphere clear up to space – “

“Rhi, it’s true, the Earth may be seriously damaged. Even if we can minimize the worst effects, we may at the very least we may destroy the state of California, which I would regret – “

“I bet the Californians would too,” Arhu said under his breath.

“But for that price, if things go right we’ll shut down the invader’s access to our whole khiliocosm so It can never get in here again. And worst case, even if it doesn’t work, by Iau we’ll give the Great Old One Outside something to remember us by, a multidimensional abscess in its very guts that’ll never heal — and stuff a hairball into sa’Rraah’s gullet like she’s never had since Aaurh the Mighty shoved the Big Bang down her throat and made her cough it up!”

Rhiow wanted to just lie down and cover her eyes with her tail. It’s such a tom thing to say. Yet splendid in its way. The spirit of Life hooking a claw in Death’s ear– And the wizardry is solid. What can I possibly say?

Except that it’s a better idea than anything I’ve come up with.

Even though I’m still not sure it’ll work —

“Urruah, I have to think about it for a little,” Rhiow said. “And take it to the Whisperer, obviously. But whatever we wind up doing, this threat has to be resolved and destroyed in this time. Otherwise it’ll simply propagate up the timeline into our world and execute all over again, as theearlier tablets warned. And not just through time, but through all the spaces and worlds that the One from Outside is able to affect when it comes through.”

“That is plain,” Ith said. “But we must choose our course of action quickly, get behind the choice, and enact it with one heart.” He looked at Rhiow. “I am more senior than you, perhaps, by what I’ve become since we first met. But seniority is not experience. What power my presence addsto this equation is useful, but I may have done all the good I can do simply by arriving. You are the most experienced of us on site. You have to decide what to do, and lead us.”

They were all looking at her, waiting: not a one of them disagreed with what Ith said. The pressure of it all came down on Rhiow as intolerably and inescapably as the darkness had in the cavern.

“I can’t decide,” Rhiow said, distraught. “I can’t decide right now, not after what we’ve been through. I’m a wreck. I have to sleep.”

“Sleep then,” Urruah said. “So will we: we’ve had a rough night. If this follows the timing data we have so far, we’ve got at least until nightfall. But then we’ve got to move.”

Rhiow tottered off in the direction of the Silent Man’s bedroom. Behind her, she heard Ith say to the Silent Man, “By the way – I have heard that a provision of great fame can be obtained here. Do you know of a place called Langer’s?”

There was a pause. Langer’s–? Oh, wait. You mean that new little deli down by Seventh and Alvorado? Sure, I know it.

“Then since the world may be about to end, while there is still time, let us go to investigate its pastrami.”

Rhiow rolled her eyes and pushed the bedroom door shut behind her.

She was afraid that by now she might have slipped into that state where sheer exhaustion leaves you desperate for sleep yet unable to achieve it. But this turned out not to be the case. No sooner had Rhiow curled up on the windowsill in the Silent Man’s bedroom than she fell straight into slumber as dark and total as if another cavern like the one behind Dagenham’s place had fallen on her. How long this happy state lasted, she couldn’t tell: but there came a moment when she was aware of lying on the floors of dream, and Rhiow realized that she wasn’t alone.

She opened one bleary eye in the darkness.“Hwaith,” she said, “please, of all times, not now…”

I am not Hwaith, the answer came back, sounding more than usually annoyed.

Rhiow bristled as she realized Who had invaded her slumbers. Slowly she sat up, yawned, and then deliberately threw one hind leg over her back and started washing right in the face of the Lone Power, giving her privates her best attention in the best insult she could summon at short notice.“You’re going to have the hide off me soon enough,” Rhiow said between sets of strokes, not bothering to look up. “I’d think you might let me sleep one last time without ruining even what good I can still get out of that.”

Sleep is not going to be an issue for any of us soon if you don’t take advantage of the chance laid before you, sa’Rraah said.

Oh, wonderful. Yet another temptation, right here on the threshold of the end of the worlds, Rhiow thought, annoyed at the Lone One’s eternal fixity. “What is it now?” she said. “Don’t I have enough problems without You poking your nose even further into my dish? What chance are you talking about?”

You have been very forward about assuming that you know what I have in mind as regards this whole situation, sa’Rraah said.

It was most unsettling to hear her in this mode, speaking as clearly as the Whisperer normally did. But at the moment it was the Whisperer who was being more than usually silent. Everything else is so topsy-turvy right now, Rhiow thought, why should this be any different? She licked her nose.“Daughter of the Queen,” she said, trying to be polite, but unable to resist using an epithet that would remind the one on the other side of the conversation exactly where her loyalties lay, “your motives have always been the same from aeon to aeon. What wisdom would there be in assuming you’d suddenly gone all distracted, like some kitten chasing a leaf in the wind, and had started doing good?”

The Lone One’s purring laughter came rumbling through the darkness. “I wouldn’t be so quick to laugh,” Rhiow said. “Let me put a possibility to you, Queen’s Daughter: something that’s been occurring to me this last day or so. That in the deeps of time, when you discovered the existence of this terrible Power from Outside — the force for which Tepeyollotl is merely an avatar — you thought you might be able to use It for your own purposes. You found a way to reach It, and you entered into what the ehhif would call a ‘deal with the Devil’ with that power. In exchange for your help in making a gateway into our worlds, it would destroy the Powers that had been hindering your will for so long. Then, after the ‘Great Old One’ had come plunging into our sheaf of universes and wrecked everything, It would leave you in peace to rule what remained of the Queen’s domain. A delightful thought! Revenge and mastery, all at once, after all these aeons of being balked. …But then you discovered that the Darkness from Outside was far bigger than anything you had imagined – a force that not even the Queen, not even all the avatars of the One right across every known universe joined together, could thrust out of reality once It had got in. And somehow or other, You got wind of its real intent: that You, no less than everything else in reality, from the littlest speck of dust up to the One, would be drowned in Its darkness and unmade.”

As she spoke, the laughter had trailed off, gone silent. Now, all around her in the darkness, Rhiow could hear a low ugly yowl starting way down in sa’Rraah’s throat.

“And possibly you even found that It had played you,” Rhiow said. “Not merely that It intended to use you as a tool, and then to destroy you – but that It was laughing at you.” Rhiow put down that one lag and put the other one over her shoulder. “And that, of course, could not be borne under any circumstances. So you began to consider… unusual levels of intervention.”

Rhiow started washing again. The growl in the blackness went on, but she ignored it; and after a while it began slowly to subside.

Back off a little now, Rhiow thought, and let Her have some stretching space.“In the cavern,” she said, “though they were thick as ants on a dead rat, Your little friends didn’t attack us. Why would that have been?”

Because the One from Outside thinks I am Its friend, sa’Rraah said, I have been acting a certain part…

“’Acting’! Spare me.”

Perhaps it would be as well to admit that initially, the position I took was in earnest. Not even the slightest hint of rue at being forced to make the admission. Yet if It’s to be overthrown, if– and she laughed a laugh not entirely devoid of humor – the Big Meow, as your colleague called it, is not to be heard in this world and bring about its downfall and that of all others – it must trust Me enough to do the thing that will both allow it entry and make itvulnerable. You know the law.

“Remind me,” Rhiow said, scrubbing her face. “There are so many laws, and you’ve broken most of them at one point or another.”

To interact successfully with matter, the Lone One said, Gods must descend into its realm, and join with matter, take it into Themselves. Rhiow could heard the distaste in her voice, like that of a Person forced to use a particularly dirty litterbox and step in the old waste. Nasty stuff that matter is, and the sordid business of mixing it with the purity of spirit, so awful—

This particular snobbery of the Lone One’s, Rhiow knew about quite well. “The point you’re making,” Rhiow said, “is that when a Power descends into the mortal sphere, it becomes vulnerable to physical attack and other such strategies that work on mortal beings.”

Yes.

This was certainly one aspect of the attack on the Outside One that Urruah and Hwaith and Aufwi were contemplating. Urruah hadn’t been overstating the potential effects on anything physical that tried to use a gate that was being subjected to a double eversion. Yet I have to be sure. She is still the Lone One, after all…

“You’re being unusually forthcoming of late,” Rhiow said. “Is this what you did with Dagenham, Queen’s daughter? Instead of sending one of your little jackals to whisper to him, did you perhaps do it yourself, as you’re doing it with me now? Did you tell him where to find poor Laurel, how to catch what remained of a soulsplit wizard after her body was gone, and what to do with her? A wizard that perhaps you yourself drove to madness and suicide?”

And if I did? said the darkness. Would that be so much worse than a thousand million other things I’ve done before?The worlds are My plaything, as you surely know. My Dam may claim the primacy of creation, but I have found another – one she has spent all of time contesting without success.

“Yet suddenly,” Rhiow said, “here you are, the greatest power in the Worlds save Iau – as you would have us believe – holding up your side of this little chat and not bringing your power to bear on me. Because you need me for something. Because you suddenly find that the rats you turned loose to gnaw at the roots of the Tree for your amusement are instead about to bring it down on top of you. Because the game you set out to play has without warning turned far more serious than you ever dreamed. And now only through the willing cooperation of mere mortals, paltry things made of matter with souls stuck inside, can you keep the worlds that have been your playground from being destroyed, and yourself and your Mother and all your sisters and all the hosts of Heaven from being devoured by something as much more powerful than you as you are more powerful than us.”

A long, long silence then.

“So I’ll take that as a yes,” Rhiow said, and went back to washing.

The quiet all around her was most ominous. But Rhiow kept washing. She was not the most passionate player of hauissh, but she had the wit to know when she was sitting in the best position she’d ever held in such a game, and she intended to enjoy it.

She put her leg down and paused for a moment as if considering where to wash next.“In any case,” Rhiow said, “I wouldn’t want you to be overly concerned. I think Urruah and the boys have our solution sorted out now.”

Their little plan? Amusing. Even satisfactory, on the merely physical level. But it won’t work without Me.

Rhiow was instantly intent on not revealing the effect this declaration was having on her, particularly the word“satisfactory”. “You would say that, of course,” Rhiow said, “to save face, if nothing else.” She regarded one forepaw and started licking it idly.

The Outside One has managed minor breaches into our realities before, sa’Rraah said. But these have always been merely local: one universe or another. And always it has been driven out, and the breaches sealed. Eventually the Outside One came to know that only with the active assistance of one of the resident Powers could It break through right across the sheaf of sheaves of worlds, and make the breakthrough permanent. Even so It would have to put forth all Its strength. For if It failed, It would never be able to make such an attempt again, and must remain confined to the Outermost Darkness forever.

Rhiow started washing the side of one paw, then scrubbed behind her ear with it. So?

So even as junior a wizard as you should understand that there’s a spiritual component to this problem, said the Lone Power. It can’t be omitted from any potential solution. The One Outside, insofar as such a vast unliving negation can be said to want anything, wants to be a god. As part of our agreement… I suggested that It could be shown how. Therefore, as It attempts Its incursion, it expects me to confer upon It…

“Godhead?” Rhiow said. “Oh, come on!”

I had some training for the position, sa’Rraah said. Our worlds’ cosmogony had a different prospective direction once, before our Royal Dam overreacted to something I invented.

Rhiow rolled her eyes.

But I was being trained as a possible replacement for Her, the Lone One said, in case the rigors of running a universe should require such. Didn’t you know?

Rhiow thought this sounded very like a lie, and remembered who’d also come up with that invention. “I didn’t,” she said. “But what you’re suggesting is that the One Outside expects this gift from you… and you have in mind to give It something else entirely. The opposite of what it’s expecting.”

Whatever. I’ve certainly convinced It that It needs to become physical before It can be a god. The Lone One shrugged her tail. That’s such a popular trope, after all.

“And It swallowed that?”

We’ll soon find out.

“That’s a pretty glib answer for such a tall order,” Rhiow said. “Maybe the tallest order anyone’s ever seen. And what proof can you offer me that what you say is true?”

None that your tiny mortal brain could hold, the Lone One said. But even you have to admit that what faces us now is worse by far than anything I might inflict on the worlds by Myself. Yes, My agenda remains. Yet if this course of events goes forward, there’s an end to agendas for all of us, and for all time. If I play hauissh with the Queen and the worlds to their detriment, well, that’s My business. But what’s trying to happen now would end all games in the same darkness. There’s no profit in that for Me.

It all sounded very smooth and too-plausible until the last word. And there some claw of certainty snagged Rhiow’s ear and held her still a moment That selfishness, that certainty that the world could be drowned in darkness unless it suited Her plan, rang absolutely true – regardless of how much sa’Rraah mostly disliked truth, her divine Dam’s invention.

The realization made Rhiow lick her nose again, several times.“Well enough,” she said. “But why should you come to me with such a proposal. We have quite a lot of history together – “

History is the very point, sa’Rraah said. You have borne the Queen Herself inside you, in the flesh and in Her strength, for however brief a time — and lived to tell the tale. Such a passage, the cosmic irony of the merely mortal kitling bearing her Queen and Mother inside her, will have strengthened you in ways you wouldn’t understand – but gods would. And whether it’s by chance or some cursed plan of Hers, no one else would have the strength to bear Me in the same wise. And once again the absolute insufferable pride rang true, and nearly made Rhiow laugh.

“And what gift are you offering me if I fall in with your plans and actually do this insane thing?” Rhiow said. “Normally there’d be an temptation suitable to the size of the work.”

None, said the Lone One. Except that the worlds, and the Queen, will survive, and the normal state of play can be resumed after this interloper has been seen off.

Now Rhiow did laugh, and though she felt the Lone Power bristle at the sound, she couldn’t bring herself to care. “Fairest and Fallen, this still sounds entirely like a plot to make sure that the darkness does fall, by housing Yourself in me and then rendering me unable to lead my team against you and the greater darkness. Indeed, maybe that’s why you whispered Laurel’s name to me earlier – as part of the wider plot, to make me trust you when you broached this mad idea to me. Allow us a small victory – but knowing that was all it would be, the way one of us would lift a paw to let the mouse run and think it’s free before the final blow. A fine fool the Queen would think me if I fell for such a ploy after everything we’ve been through with you in the past…!”

Pulling sa’Rraah’s whiskers in such a way was reckless business, and Rhiow waited for the scorned fury and the lightnings to break loose, revealing the true intention underneath. But it didn’t happen. There was merely a long pause, and then the darkness said, with an outwardly affronted air, Whether you’re a fool or no, that’s between you and the Queen. But I tell you that She Herself has no better plan. Ask, and see.

And everything went quiet as that unseen presence withdrew.

Rhiow sat there in the dark of dream for some time, waiting for an afterword, some rebuttal from other levels of reality. But nothing came. At last she said to the Whisperer, Well, your sister’s voluble today. And you have nothing to say on this subject? No advice?

The silence was deafening. Rhiow couldn’t recall having heard anything like it before. It was not the waiting quiet the Whisperer allowed you to hear when She expected you to figure something out for yourself. It was straightforward uncertainty. Whatever words the Lone One might have for Rhiow in this pass, the Queen had none. And as for sa’Rraah, there had been more than mere indignation behind her riposte. The Lone Power was afraid, and – again, absolutely in character for her – unwilling to show it: for among a People for whom pride was normally no sin, sa’Rraah carried enough of it around inside Her skin for an entire species. Not even now, not even with worlds at stake, would She admit either Her own impotence or Her fear of what was to come.

So, Rhiow thought. So it’s true.

And after this sank in, Rhiow laid her ears right back at the unfairness of it all. So once more I’m expected to carry a whole world out of trouble by the scruff, she said to both the Queen and the Lone One. More than just a world! – or so it seems, if I’m not actually being tricked into the worlds’ destruction.

The unbroken silence did not help her composure. She was fuming. If we survive this, she shouted into the Void, I want a sabbatical! Do you hear me??

Silence still; but Rhiow thought she was heard.

She curled up and lay down again.“Now if I can just get some sleep out of this sleep,” she said to the darkness, “I’ll see what can be done…”

Nerves woke her up early, as she’d half expected. It was early afternoon, and outside the sun was shining on the palm trees and the bougainvillea flowers as if the world wasn’t about to end.

Stop thinking like that… she thought. She got up, stretched fore and aft, and sat on the window for a moment, watching a hummingbird visit the flowers one after another with methodical and singleminded thoroughness.

Her mind went back to the last things under discussion before she’d slept. Urruah and his solutions…. Yet she hadn’t thought that his solution to moving the Penn gate would work, either: and it had. That seemed ‘so tommish’, too… Now she had even more evidence that Urruah was on the right track: sa’Rraah’s somewhat grudging description of the plan as “satisfactory.”

Assuming that I too am not being played…

But the Whisperer had been silent… and there came a point where you had to set paranoia aside and act. Rhiow jumped down from the windowsill, pulled the door open with one paw, and strolled down the hall.

The living room was a hive of wizardly activity, with spell circles laid out on the floor and Siffha’h, Urruah, Hwaith, and Aufwi working on various tasks: while Helen Walks Softly still sat on the floor looking the work over, and the Silent Man sat at his desk making hurried notes on something. At the edge of the circle Rhiow stood for a moment, looking at it unfocused to get a general idea ofwhat was going on: then sat down and washed her face, acutely aware of the others watching her.

She let them wait, hunting for the right words. Then she lifted her head.

“All right,” Rhiow said at last. “Where’s a good place to make a last-ditch attempt to save the known and unknown universes?”

Her team looked at one another with satisfaction: and Hwaith caught her eye.

“Griffith Park?” he said. “There’s a great view from Mount Hollywood…”

“Fine,” Rhiow said. “We have a lot to do in a hurry besides our own setup. There are all the planet’s Regional-level and higher wizards to speak to; they’ll already know from the Powers and their manuals, in a general way, what the threat is and what’s being done about it. But we’ll need to let them know the specifics, now, and help them start preparing to preserve and protect their own pieces of the world.” She looked over at Hwaith. “And I need to talk to the Planetary,” she said. “If things on Earth get too damaged, the kindest thing may be for him or her to pull the plug.”

“I’ll get started on that,” Aufwi said, and vanished.

“You, naturally,” Rhiow said to Urruah, “won’t have been wasting time while I was off side…”

Urruah waved his tail at the spell structure he’d been working on since Rhiow had gone to sleep.

“You’ve been busy…” she said. The circle contained all the worldgate variables sourced from the attempted manifestation in the cavern, which the Whisperer’s more automated functions had thoughtfully stored for them.

He shrugged his tail in agreement.“I’ve got four redundant power containment structures built in here,” he said. “If one blows out, we’ve got room to fail.”

“Don’t say that word tonight,” Rhiow said, looking over the diagram. “Robust,” she agreed. “It’ll need to be. But why four? Three’s the normal arrangement.”

“’Three’s the charm,’” Helen said from one side, “that’s what they say in the West. But it’s my land, my cultural substrate, we’re anchoring this to. And in my people’s linguistic and cosmogonic traditions, the ‘fulfillment number’ is four. Four directions. Four winds.” She grinned. “Four feet.”

Rhiow flicked an ear in amusement, turned her attention back to the diagram.“There’s Sif’s spot,” Urruah said, indicating one sub-circle. “She’s already laid a lot of power into the basic structures, just in case something knocks her back and leaves her needing time to take a breath. Other than that – “ He waved a paw at the tightly inwritten analysis circles, completely full of a compact spiral of tiny Speech-characters. “Those have all the data about the structure of the black gating last night, both what the Whisperer got and what Aufwi and Hwaith derived from direct contact. We can match it up and scale it up to a thousand times more than last night’s power.” He turned a concerned look on her. “Which is the only thing that bothers me. Even Sif can only do so much. Power…”

“You leave that with me,” Rhiow said. “I have an alternate source. …And this – ” She indicated one circle that was dark and empty while everything else was glowing in test mode.

“That’s where the claudication will go,” he said. “Sif’s packing it now. ”

“With what?”

“A direct tap into the heart of a quasar,” said Siffha’h, who was off to one side, sitting in a small, densely interwritten circle of her own and gazing down at it thoughtfully as a power gauge display slowly crept toward half full. “The Whisperer said she had a spare one that she wasn’t using for anything.”

Rhiow gave Urruah a sideways look.“She’s being cooperative…”

“The safeties are off, Rhi,” Urruah said. “We’re being given whatever we ask for. It feels a little weird…”

“If not now,” Rhiow said, “then when? Since if the Powers aren’t nice to us right now, there might not be a universe tomorrow… Good work, anyway. With that much power and that much mass packed into the portable claudication, when we shove it into the gate to start the eversion, it should be like nothing even Iau’s ever imagined.”

“Let’s hope so…” Urruah said.

Rhiow wandered out into the back yard. There were People eating the buffet on the concrete by the house, and Rhiow greeted them casually in passing: but most of them were fluffed up, and looking repeatedly over their shoulders between bites. This was due to the presence of Ith, who was reclining in the middle of the back lawn amid a scatter of white cold-cut wrappers. Beside him, Arhu lay on his back with his paws in the air and his gut visibly bulging.

“How much pastrami?” Rhiow said, looking with some dismay at all the garbage lying around.

“Not too much,” Ith said. “Only four or five pounds. It would not have been polite to deprive everyone else of their sandwiches…”

“You should clean this up,” Rhiow said. “You’ll attract rats.”

Ith gave her a droll look that wordlessly suggested rats were the very least of their problems.

“And you,” Rhiow said to Arhu. “Isn’t there something you should be doing? Something Sight-related?”

“Nothing to See right now, Rhi,” Arhu said. “It’s either all light, or all dark… So I’m taking the afternoon off.”

Rhiow snorted.“Greed and sloth,” she said. “No doubt the other ehhif sins will be along shortly…”

She strolled over to sit down by Ith’s head. “You’re likely to be the key to all this,” she said.

“I thought it more likely you would be,” he said.

Rhiow suddenly got the feeling that Ith knew about her conversation in the darkness with the Lone One.“We’ll have to see about that,” she said. “But your presence back here definitely changes things in our favor. Not even sa’Rraah anticipated the way you were going to come out of the Old Downside, or that you’d turn her Old Serpent avatar against her and drag it up with you into the Light. Now you’re not only the White Serpent, but also a living connection between the Old Downside and the other complex-state worlds ‘beneath’ the world, the foundations of Earth’s physical reality.”

Ith looked thoughtful, his claws twiddling together.“Yet this time I am not meant to be just a connection,” he said, “but an anchor. The Serpent wrapped around the roots of the Tree…”

Rhiow waved her tail gently in agreement as Urruah came out to join them.“The dimensional and physical dissociation that will accompany the incursion of Tepeyollotl’s master will rip the planet apart if it can’t be held stable,” she said. “That stability’s going to have to be sourced from the more central dimensions, the Old Downside being the most easily accessible. You’re a direct and powerful link to a more senior and more ancient Earth, and you’re going to take most of the strain when the Outside One breaks through.”

“When it breaks through,” Urruah said, sounding disturbed. Arhu had rolled over as Helen came wandering out as well.

Rhiow’s tail waved gently, a gesture of uneasy agreement. “It has to,” she said. “And It will anyway. There’s no way we can stop It. Not Queen Iau Herself could stop It. However – once It’s through, we have a weapon it won’t be expecting.”

“Ith,” Arhu said.

“In part. After all, he’s Tepeyollotl’s rightful enemy: his battle’s a matter of legend that runs deep in local spacetime.”

“Even though it has not happened yet…” Ith said, sounding a little dubious, though he wasn’t arguing the point.

Urruah stretched.“But that’s the way things go in the greater field of being, isn’t it,” he said. “Echoes from the great battles travel both forward and backward in the local timeflow. We know that you’re going to fight him because the legends say you did…”

“All we need to determine now,” Ith said, his jaw dropping in a grin, “is whether I won or lost.” He glanced over at Rhiow. “On that count the tablets were, if nothing else, equivocal…”

Rhiow looked up at Helen.“And your presence here is vital as well, because you’re of this place, in both the past and the future. You and your folk are profoundly connected to this land in ways we can’t be: rooted in ways that People aren’t and not even ehhif usually are. You’ll be our other link to the deep world, Earth’s inner realities. If you and Ith between you can’t keep Earth in one piece around here, I don’t know what can, for you’re a shaman as well as a wizard. There are powers answering to you that we don’t fully understand… but we know they’ll be on your side.”

Helen nodded.“I think I have an idea of what to do,” she said. “I’ll start getting ready when we’re done here.”

“One thing,” Hwaith said.

Rhiow hadn’t heard or felt him appear between Urruah and Ith, but that was par for the course. Surprised, for they hadn’t heard him either, everyone else looked at him. But Hwaith’s his eyes were on Rhiow. “You’re not saying much about what your part in this is going to be,” he said.

“Well,” she said, “to produce the result we’re after, sa’Rraah is going to have to act as opener of the way. And to do it most effectively, she’s going to need someone to channel through. That will be me.”

Her team stared at her.“Why you?!” Urruah said.

“Because I’ve been set up for it,” Rhiow said. “The last time we got caught in this kind of situation, I wound up playing that role for the Queen Herself, remember? Apparently this has rendered me unusually suitable to contain the Lone One this time.”

“Wait just a minute,” Arhu said. “Last time I did the Lone One! I have previous experience –“

“Not enough for this,” Rhiow said. “It’s settled, Arhu. And so’s the script for this little drama.” She cocked an eye at Urruah. “We root the gate in your chosen site and power it up. When the incursion starts, I take sa’Rraah into me, manifest Her here, and synch Her with the gate to let the arriving guest know that Its welcoming committee is on site. Then the Outside One comes through the gate to accept the gift She’s delivering It. And when It does, and It gets physical enough to affect, you shove the claudication into our gate and mesh it to the incursion – “ From Hwaith, who was looking suddenly stricken, Rhiow looked back to Urruah. “’Blooey.’”

Everyone sat quiet for a moment. Then Urruah said with great enthusiasm,“I’m excited about this plan! I’m proud to be a part of this plan!”

Aufwi threw him a wry look, probably secondary to some tom joke.“…And then what?” said Siffha’h, who’d wandered out with Aufwi to see what was going on.

The question cheered Rhiow strangely, though at this point the cheer was irrational.“Then we clean up the mess,” Rhiow said. “What else? Probably the whole area will need major temporospatial patching. But for a team who once helped tidy up all of Central Park after an incursion by crazed dinosaurs – “ and she glanced at Ith with amusement – “none of us should even have sweaty pads afterwards.” She flirted her tail.

Her team and Helen looked at one another.“Water bowl full inside?” Rhiow said. “I could use a drink. Then we have a lot to do…”

She strolled back to the house, in the French doors, headed past the Silent Man’s empty chair into the kitchen, put her head down in the water bowl and drank and drank, for her mouth was very dry.

“Rhiow – “

She finished drinking before she looked up at Hwaith.

“I wish you wouldn’t do this,” he said.

“I truly don’t see that I have much of a choice.”

“Let me rephrase that,” Hwaith said after a moment. “I really, really wish you didn’t have to do this.”

So do I! she wanted to shout.

“Of course,” Hwaith said very quietly, “that’s not anything you’re going to say, especially in front of your team. But regardless, you should know that someone hears.”

“The way you did inside the Silent Man’s mind,” Rhiow said. And just now. “Hwaith… I don’t forget what you did there – “

Hwaith’s ears went back: then he shrugged his tail and turned away. “Please,” he said, “don’t thank me again. I’m just sorry – “ He stopped, started again. “It should have occurred to me that this would never work, that there was no way you could – “

He moved away.“I really am sorry,” he said, not looking back. “We’ve got work to do. I am a wizard, and you can count on me to do my part, regardless of other matters. Just so you know. But it’s a pity that things aren’t otherwise…”

“Hwaith,” Rhiow said after a moment.

He stopped, his tail twitching, but didn’t turn.

“There’s no point in this,” Rhiow said. “We may win tonight. But even if we do win, it’s likely enough that I won’t survive. I’ve come away from containing a god once. But twice? And when the Power involved is sa’Rraah, and very likely to shatter the vessel out of spite once its job’s done?” She was trying to sound calm, and trying to be kind; but now, now that the time was getting so close, she couldn’t entirely keep the fear out of her voice. “Surely you understand that I can’t see the point in planning very far ahead.”

He did turn, then. His eyes, too, were filled with fear. But there was something else there: stubbornness. He simply was not going to give up.“Maybe you can’t, right now,” Hwaith said. “I can understand that. But there’s no harm in having a plan, Rhiow. The worst it can do is fail.”

She stared at him.

Hwaith gazed back for a moment, and then turned again to go out.

Rhiow watched him, and a curious feeling began to rise in her– a desire, in the face of the overshadowing darkness, to do something utterly nonsensical just this once. So much of being a team leader involved being careful, being sensible, not being distracted by your own wishful thinking, covering all the possibilities. Yet isn’t this a possibility? she thought. An insane one. And Iau only knows how it could ever come to fruition. But still. Still –

And especially when there was someone else who had such faith in her, regardless of everything that was happening— to deny that, to deny hope, to deny him, suddenly it just felt wrong –

“Hwaith,” Rhiow said.

He stopped, looked back one last time.

She put her whiskers forward.“Go on. Make that plan.”

Evening drew near.

In the Silent Man’s living room, Rhiow looked over everyone’s work one last time before they left, while the Man himself sat at his desk and kept a theoretically casual eye on the proceedings.

Siffha’h’s work concerned Rhiow most, for a temporospatial claudication with so much energy and mass packed down in it needed careful watching: if anything caused it to come unwrapped, the result would be spectacular damage. But Siffha’h had been extra careful about the safeties that held the claudication shut, to the point where it would practically take a nuke to undo it without the right keywords in the Speech.

“Are you sure you know the passwords by heart?” Rhiow said to Sif as she collapsed the claudication down to a glowing spheroid about the size of a pea and levitated it into an invisible otherspace pocket.

Siffha’h rolled her eyes at Rhiow. “Yes, mother…”

This reaction at least was normal. Rhiow went to watch Urruah gather up the master gating circle and collapse it in turn, vanishing it into the workspace in the back of his mind as he glanced out into the back yard, where Arhu and Ith were getting ready to transit.“The kits are taking all this pretty calmly,” she said in his ear.

“Youth has its advantages,” Urruah said. “One of them being the belief that you can never die. Or the refusal to take the belief seriously.”

Aufwi came up behind Urruah.“I have my copy of the circle,” he said.

“Got mine too,” Hwaith said from the other side.

“Everybody’s checked all their personal data in all the copies?” Urruah said. “Long-version names and terminology only? Good. Don’t want any handling routines failing to execute because someone’s using abbreviations – “

“This is possibly a caution that we’ve heard before,” Aufwi said.

“About a thousand times…” said Hwaith.

“A thousand and one is good,” Urruah said. “Let’s shoot for a thousand and two.”

From down the hallway that led to the bedrooms came Helen Walks Softly, and the Silent Man’s eyes opened wide. Instead of that beat-up LAPD sweatshirt or anything by Elie Saab, Helen was wearing a two-piece midcalf dress of beautifully tanned deerskin, the sleeveless top of which was embroidered with bead designs of whale and orca and salmon. The skirt was ornamented with geometric lightningbolt designs in white and brown shell, as were the deerskin boots below. Helen’s hair was tied back into a long, long ponytail, her cheeks were streaked with red and white clay, and her arms ringed in white clay paint bands; her milkweed-linen and flicker-feather headband had a fan of blackcondor feathers angling up from the back of it, and in one hand she carried a pair of condor-feather reed wands.

The Silent Man looked her up and down and pursed his lips to whistle soundlessly. I didn’t know the end of the world was formal, he said. I’ll go get my tux.

Helen smiled at him and waved the wands at him in amused blessing.

Rhiow walked over to him and reared up to lean on his knee.“You’ve been very kind to us,” she said, “and so very flexible through all this….” She stopped then, for there was no point in saying much more. “Go well, cousin.”

He put down a hand to scratch her behind the ears. If this is it, Blackie, he said, all I can say is, it’s a better end than I’d been anticipating. The last couple of days have been a hell of a ride… and I’d sooner go out knowing what I do, than not knowing at all.

“If we’re lucky…” Arhu said, and then stopped.

Don’t say it, Patches. Just come back, and we’ll laugh about it later. He looked around at the People and Helen. All of you.

“From your mouth to the Spirit’s ear,” Helen said. “Rhiow?”

She flirted her tail“yes”.

They vanished as twilight fell.

The spot that Hwaith had chosen for them was at the end of a long drive that came up the top of Mount Hollywood on the north side. In the middle of the drive stood a high white granite obelisk with a base like a seven-pointed star, in the angles of which stood statues of six ehhif astronomers. On a white pedestal just south of that, a bronze sundial with a steel-strip gnomon pointed at the North Star. At the other end of the drive, facing the mountain’s south slope and set in the middle of a broad green lawn, was the Observatory itself, with its great central dome all sheathed in rectangular greened-copper plates, and the two smaller ones each down at the end of the east-and west-oriented wings. It was a gracious and handsome space, and Rhiowlooked around it and wished she’d had time to see it before the events that were about to unfold.

All around them, the brightening lights of Los Angeles lapped upwards toward the surrounding ridges, fading out into the faint speckling of the sparsely built-up hillside streets and then into complete darkness, with here and there a dark spot lacking any lights at all– virgin slopes not yet seen as useful for anything but the occasional theater or golf course. In the fading light of evening, the view across the ridges and canyons toward Cahuenga Peak with the sunset behind it was particularly lovely. The white of the sign that said HOLLYWOODLAND was clearly visible, in this lighting, despite all the dust kicked up in the air by the previous evening’s quakes.

Rhiow stood there for a while just looking at it, and watching the lights twinkle to life on the hillsides to westward.“Some days,” Hwaith said, “you can’t see that from here at all. A last glimpse…”

“You were right about the view from here, anyway,” Rhiow said. Reluctantly she turned away from it, looked at Urruah. “By my preference, I’d set up the gate right here on this entry lawn. I take it we’re past closing time now – “

“The last visitor-ehhif have just gone home. There are a few observatory staff, but Sif is going to make them feel like they want to leave. Maybe a little tremor to suggest there’s about to be an aftershock from last night.”

Urruah was paying this discussion no mind. He was looking behind them at the noble domed building with its white Deco columns, and his expression was distressed.“This is all wrong,” he said, “it’s just not fair – “

Rhiow looked at him in great bemusement.“What? What’s the matter?”

“Do you know,” Urruah said, sounding unusually mournful, “how many times this building’s been destroyed in ffihlm?”

“A lot,” Aufwi said.

“Yes. Aliens and monsters and Iau knows what else… It never occurred to me that I might be involved in doing something similar!”

“I know. Life,” Aufwi said, “it’s full of little surprises.”

Toms! Rhiow thought in near-desperation.“Cousins…” she said.

Urruah sighed.“The gate,” he said, and turned to get busy.

From around the corner of the building came Ith, with Arhu still riding on his head.“Everything’s clear up here,” Arhu said.

“Good,” Rhiow said. “’Ruah – “

From where Urruah stood, the spell circle that would contain the rerooted LA worldgate was flooding outward across the observatory’s lawn and walks to its full size, several hundred feet wide. As it manifested, Siffhah went over to the empty space prepared for her – now nearly twenty feet wide – and spoke the brief sentences in the Speech that activated the small dome-shield that would keep her and the claudication safefrom whatever energies might assault them until they were needed.

Hwaith looked over at Aufwi.“Let’s go get the gate,” he said.

The two of them vanished. Ith came stalking over to Rhiow, who had been joined by Helen, and the three of them spent a few moments looking out over the hills, and the many little sparkling lights that spoke of human habitation.“They are going to see some terrible things tonight,” Ith said. “And leaving the strictly physical destruction aside, considering the fragility of human minds in the face of multidimensional phenomena, many of them may die of what they see…”

“I’ve done what I can about that,” Helen said. “I’ve spoken to my ikheya, and the powers of the Earth know what’s coming, especially after last night. The Elder Spirits of the Earth, the ikhareya, are awakening and putting forth their strength. A lot of people will feel the urge to go to bed early tonight. Many others who have to be awake will find their senses dulled and their interest in the sky or the hills minimal. It’s all that can be done for the people, at least before the fact. Afterwards, what we have to patch, we’ll patch. And as for the Earth itself… it’ll stay where it is the best it can: and we’ll help it.”

A few moments later Hwaith and Aufwi returned, transiting directly into one of the non-active parts of the spell circle. Between them hung the nonpatent gate, just a tall, narrow, shadowy veil of rippling force in this growing dusk.

“Right there – “ Hwaith said, indicating a container-circle near the center of the diagram. The two of them busied themselves tethering the gate into the language-recepticle prepared for it. A few moments later the borders of the gate sprang out clear and sharp as Hwaith touched one of the activator strands in the spell-circle with one paw and brought it online.

He stood studying its conformation for a few moments, watching the faint polychromatic light of a gate’s normal standby state run up and down the warp and weft of the hyperstrings woven into it. “Looks steady,” he said.

Aufwi walked around the gate and looked it up and down.“Agreed. Let’s do it.” He stepped into the circle and touched another of the control lines.

The gate blazed up bright as a spotlight, throwing long sharp shadows away from Rhiow and her team and from Ith and Helen. The interwoven hyperstrings of the gate’s pseudosurface throbbed with the power pouring through them, brighter with every passing second. It was an alarming sight. If any gate Rhiow was managing had started to behave this way, she would either have locked it to some location and activated it or would have taken it offline instantly, terrified that it would burn out while being held in the nonpatent state. But this one’s been reinforced against that, she thought. And even if it did burn out, we could build another. Assuming there’s a planet left to attach it to –

Then something made Rhiow shiver.“Ith,” she said, looking over toward where Ith and Helen had been standing near the edge of the terrace, where the mountain slope dropped away southward. “Ready?”

Helen was standing with the condor feather wands in each hand, looking south with a listening expression. As for Ith, without warning he was now about ten times his everyday size, a towering fanged apparition from which any sensible tyrannosaurus would have fled; and his stripes were burning paler, fading to match the hot underlying gold. It was one of the ways Ith appeared when roaming the plains of the Old Downside with the saurians he had redeemed and brought out of the darkness with him. But the other, more ancient form he wore at need, Rhiow suspected he was holding in abeyance. Trust him, he’ll know the moment —

She turned her attention back to the gate. It kept throbbing brighter and brighter, and Rhiow looked over at the control characters written underneath the spot where it hovered in the spell-circle.

“It’ll hold,” Aufwi said.

Urruah was stalking around the inside of the circle, carefully stepping in the empty access and maintenance patches and keeping an eye on the gate’s power draw. “Yes it will,” he said, “but we’re going to need a new one when this is done…”

“Which will be a good thing,” Hwaith said heading over to the management circle inside the diagram that held his own link to the power draw controls. “Especially considering how much trouble this thing’s been giving me lately. Wouldn’t you love the chance to do initial emplacement on a gate? And see the installation done right for a change?”

“Please,” Urruah said, “don’t get me started. That one gate over at Penn, even at the best of times – “

He started in on his favorite rant about the worst-built gate of the Penn complex, and Rhiow threw Hwaith a grateful glance as the gate throbbed brighter and brighter, coming up to the peak of its energy feed.‘Ruah gets nervous in the runup to any intervention, she said silently. This is how he copes, but when things break loose –

It’s how I cope too, Hwaith said silently. What do you think I’m doing now? But he’ll be fine, Rhi –

This was almost certainly true, but it was somehow a great relief to have someone else saying it to her. Rhiow headed over to where Sif was babysitting the claudication package, which sat like a tiny fiery pearl in front of her at the center of the domed-in circle.“It’s stable?”

“No problems so far,” Siffha’h said, not taking her eyes off it.

Rhiow went on past her to the spot where Arhu was sitting by himself, eyes closed as if ignoring everything around him… but she knew nothing was further from the truth. “Arhu…?”

He didn’t look up or around: he didn’t need to. “It’s coming,” he said very quietly. “Get ready.”

Once more Rhiow turned her attention to the sky. No stars were showing, initially because of the dust still hanging in the air. But then it became plain that there were not going to be any stars tonight; and Rhiow started going cold from the inside out.

The initial effect hardly looked apocalyptic enough, at first. It began getting dark. Well, it was doing that already, Rhiow thought. But the unnatural quality of the descending darkness, something relentless and strangely cruel, became plainer moment by moment as the gate came up to its maximum power output and held there. Outside the circle of the gate’s radiance, the ugly new nightfall seemed to be fading down not merely the light of the sky and the sunset, but the outlines and colors in things – not the way normal night did, but in a way that suggested that light and color and even solidity were being sucked out of everything. For the timebeing, the ferocious light of the gate resisted the sucking. But even its normally multicolored light was turning pale and unhealthy-looking, a livid sheen setting in.

This is what we saw last night, Rhiow said. Here it comes–

Not far from the obelisk halfway down the drive, something started to trouble the air– a curdling, a growing obscurity. Very faintly, a suggestion of a dingy weave could be seen forming in it, growing more solid, darkening. But as it darkened the weave grew somehow more distinct. Rhiow’s fur rose at the sight of it, as it began to shimmer around the edges with that same disturbing light that the gate in the cavern had radiated.

Blacker and blacker it went, and all around the second gate things were quickly losing their color and their solidity. The white obelisk faded away like the Moon behind cloud as the outflowing gloom washed up against and around it, flowed past it. Rhiow watched with concern as that ink-in-water obscurity in the air deepened, advanced toward the boundaries of the spell containing the LA gate.

“Rhi,” Urruah said. “Better get in here – “

She licked her nose several times, very quickly.“No,” she said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“But Rhi – “

She reached back into her mind to erect around her the small but robust personal shield that she’d constructed earlier with this situation in mind. “’Ruah, if I have to climb out of there to do something in company with our silent partner, the gate could be overwhelmed when you crack the shield to let me out. The gate’s both the bait and the trap, and the rat hasn’t stuck its nose in yet. So seal it up.”

Inside the gating circle, Sif’s expression was unsurprised: she spared Rhiow only a glance and went back to concentrating on the tiny blazing claudication-pearl she was guarding. But Aufwi and Hwaith looked at Rhiow in alarm.

Rhiow ignored them and looked over at Arhu, who was trying to climb up on top of Ith again.“Not this time,” she said, sorry to do so, but it was necessary. “He may have to go where you can’t, Arhu, and do what you can’t, and you don’t dare slow him down. Get in there with the others.”

“Rhi – “

There was no energy to waste arguing with him. She simply held his eyes. After a moment Arhu looked away and up at Ith, who reached him down a claw.“You must,” Ith said.

Arhu cursed, then bumped his head hard against the claw and ran back to the spell-circle, leaping through the interface into one of the maintenance roundels. Urruah glanced back at Aufwi. The circle domed over with light, leaving Rhiow standing just outside.

She turned away and licked her nose again. I really need to stop doing that, she thought, it’s going to get sore… And then Rhiow laughed out loud. Am I insane?? She sat down on the paved walkway and tried to calm herself down while she watched the dark gate finish forming and flare into a ragged patch of shadowy, eye-hurting fire.

It could not be looked at for long– there was something increasingly offensive about that livid light — so Rhiow turned her attention to Ith and Helen. Ith was a fanged and taloned statue of burning gold, now, even taller than he had been before, and looking wesward to where the last embers of sunset were fading away to cinders. Helen stood still over by the edge of the terrace where the ground dropped away, watching the unnatural darkening of the night around them. Alone of all unprotected things around them, as the shadows in the air spread away from the new dark gate, Helen seemed not to be losing the dim warm color ofher deerskin dress; the shell-designs on it glowed faintly, and her hair was a dark river down her back, a far more wholesome darkness than what was gathering ever more intensely around the black gate.

Rhiow glanced back at it through air gone murky with shadows, and saw that it was elongating upward. No, she thought then. It’s being pulled up. Things were about to start happening, she was sure of it. Keep them congruent… Rhiow said silently to Urruah. Don’t let that one drag yours up with it and get out of control.

No fear of that, Arhu said. I’m borrowing some rooting from him. His eyes went to Ith’s ever more brightly-glowing form. We’re not going anywhere.

The dark gate rose, and the shadows in the air flowed down from it as Rhiow had seen thick mist come flowing down the hillslope behind the Silent Man’s house in the morning. Away from the ground, it started shedding its spreading gloom more quickly, more thickly. Soon the white obelisk was completely gone and the Observatory was reduced to a hard-to-see ghost through the dimness, visible only because of Ith’s fierce glow against its north-facing walls. He was watching the gate rise high over the terrace, his claws knitting together as always: but there was something far more studied about that movement now, and Rhiow thought she could see the glow of manipulated hyperstrings between the claws, wound down small and tight… for the moment.

A shiver went right down Rhiow from her ears to her tail and all her fur stood on end as the black gate paused in the air above them, and began to throb and grow. It spread fast, its blackness flickering now, impossible to look at for more than a second’s glance. And then, the portal section of the gate having widened out to nearly fifty feet across, it went utterly dark… and something came out.

It was a single pinpoint locus of darkness, like a micro-black hole. But no innocent singularity ever carried with it such a freight of unreasoning horror as swept over Rhiow with its appearance. Inside the shielded worldgate enclosure, Rhiow saw all her team staring at the tiny thing with loathing and fear. But it did not stay tiny long. Very slowly it started blooming outward into a dark sphere, as incursions from mathematically more complex dimensions tend to do. The sphere was not solid: part of it passed through over and through the black worldgate as it grew, briefly obscuring it, then drifting to one side. Absolutely silently it grew to ten feet in diameter, thirty, fifty, a hundred feet wide. Rhiow noticed, then, how all sound had been fading away with its growth. The realization made her fur stand up even more enthusiastically than it had been.

That was when the black sphere finally stopped growing; and through its surface, on all sides, a writhing shape began to extrude.

At which point the air began to scream.

Right through her shield Rhiow could instantly feel the burning on her fur, the desperate inner shriek of matter outraged by intimate contact with something impossible in normal space, the air burning a brief and horrified violet of instant annihilation where it came into direct contact with what was coming out of the black-burning sphere. Black wasn’t even the right word for it; but it would have to do, for sensory perception in this continuum had few other ways to deal with the concept of something that was the absence of physicality and on which light refused to fall, as if refusing contact with something so alien. Emptiness didn’t workas a description either; both brain and spirit, used to dealing with a universe that had no true emptiness in it though it was full of space, shied away with nature’s own abhorrence to something that by comparison made a vacuum seem packed full. Caught between the contradictions, the eye and the mind both reported emptiness that was full of something peculiarly horrible, that curled out in strangling tendrils that gripped and slid over and around the hyperstrings in space, annihilating even them where touched, and gazed eyelessly at you with a hunger that could never be filled no matter what it devoured –

From down in the city, from nearer on the hillsides, the anguished screams of ehhif began to arise– innocent souls realizing that they without warning they were suddenly damned, and far worse than damned. Rhiow shot a glance at the gating circle. The nothingness was washing up around it, eating at it; she could see thinning in the outer walls of the protective dome over it, places where the splashed-out glow of the LA gate against the forcefield was wearing thin. Inside it, Urruah and Hwaith and Aufwi were all reared up, every one of them with his claws full of hyperstrings that were trying to warp out of shape, but being prevented. For how long? Rhiow thought, shuddering with the pain that beat on her own shield, relentlessly eating through it toward her like acid.

The dreadful shape kept on boiling out of the sphere on all sides, filling the air over the Observatory, and the air kept on screaming in agony as the shadowy manifestation of the Outside One poured into the world, like flood waters from some dark sea, irresistible, infinite. Its dreadful pressure on the soul grew moment by moment, crushing, so that you wanted to do anything to make it stop: flee, even die. But fleeing won’t help, Rhiow thought, and neither will dying. Now’s the time!

She was shivering with terror, and ashamed of it; yet she knew what she had to do… and so did sa’Rraah. You have no choice, the Lone One said in the back of her mind, urgent. I am the only one that our enemy will trust to come into contact with it. It thinks It knows my will. And now it will find out exactly how well it knows me. And then the silence fell in Rhiow’s mind again, waiting.

So will I, Rhiow thought, desperate. For of all the Powers, sa’Rraah cannot enter in except where by commission or omission She is invited. And now we find out whether the word I speak next will kill not only my body, but my soul.

One last look she threw at her team inside the great gating circle: and, inside, gazing back at her in terror, Hwaith. There has to be something else I can do–! he said to her.

At such a moment, she thought, he’s still thinking about me! It pierced her to the heart. But there was nothing he could do, and right now, only one thing left for her.

…Come, Rhiow said to the Lone Power.

And She came.

Whether what followed took a moment or forever, Rhiow couldn’t tell; she was flung down writhing, her bones burning with the entry into her body and soul of something as dark as the moment before the First Light and only a little less than an eternity old. The agelessness of the divine Rhiow had experienced before — but Queen Iau had some regard for thePeople she had made. What vastly burst into Rhiow now was the Queen’s ancient rival, the breeder of all envies and resentments, not overly concerned about the welfare of anything merely mortal except as its being gave Her a chance to drive a claw into Her Mother.

Yet sa’Rraah did not dare damage Rhiow at the moment, for fear she should fail in the work now before them.Slowly Rhiow pushed herself up again as the Lone Power slid into congruence with her. With terror she felt, first the dark and cold drawing around and clothing her, and then an awful restless fire— all angers and frustrations concentrated together at the heart of the darkness, like the core of blasting pressure at the heart of some collapsed star: heat indescribable, an unbreakable inwardness, a fury at the world that almost since the beginning of things had refused to go her way.

Power, though, that She unquestionably had as well: and unafraid Rhiow drew on that, knowing that to survive what was coming, she would need everything the Lone One had to offer her. She thought of the possibility of a shield to hold away the pain, and instantly the pain vanished, even in the face of this awful onslaught.

Very well, Rhiow thought, looking up into that darkness that had been so painful to the sight. Now the discomfort at least was gone, set aside by something in its way far worse, that core of jealous rage inside her that burned like an ancient furnace. It had burned so since Aaurh the Mighty cast sa’Rraah out of the Pridelands and away from the Hearth, and it was the proximate cause of all the miseries the Lone One had inflicted on life from then until now. How dare She slight My primacy, sa’Rraah’s heart roared so as to be heard by all Creation: how dare She give you what She will not allow Me! You will suffer for that: suffer for it forever!

Rhiow was conscious of the blatant one-sidedness of the anger, and she held desperately to that consciousness: the last thing she could afford right now was to be swept away into sa’Rraah’s undiluted point of view. But there was nothing in the universe like that anger, and it was something she would use.

That you would use— ! said something from inside her, and strove to crush her down into resistlessness. I am the immortal here, I say how we shall deal with this —

Lone One, Rhiow said, pushing back, shut up or I’ll shred your ears! We have work to do. Mortality you needed? Well, now you’ve got it. So get busy manifesting yourself! They’re buying us the time we and the world need. Don’t waste it on playing hauissh-in-the-head with me: do whatever you have to do!

In a moment–

Rhiow glanced at the Observatory. Over that way the Father of the Saurians stood towering up over the building, even in the face of the Outside One radiating the essence of a settled power that was binding all things together as they were, running up straight up into space and far down into the Earth and into neighboring dimensions. As Rhiow watched, Ith threw down the blinding wizardly construct he was holding in his claws, and Earth and air together kindled from it in a single blaze. That settled to reveal a glowing and intricate network of bindings, involving everything from the subatomic to the macrospatial levels, a network of unbreakable intention that sank into the fabric of things, reinforcing it. But enough?

There was no telling, and from the look of things, Ith wasn’t too sure either. For a breath later right around the huge base of the Observatory a massive, shining serpent-shape was curving, the gold of its burning paling down to white now, the eyes glowing dark and determined against the fire. And off to the westward, toward the sea, light began to glow in the darkness —

In the spite of the Outside One, as if the horror was happening in some other world, the horizon began to glow, and the landscape to change. The sea dried up and vanished away at the edges of things, and the coastline stopped being the coast and became just another set of ridges in a vast plain flooded by light, as out past Pacific Coast Highway were now revealed the endless vistas of the True West. The light from the eternal sunshine of the Old Downside now flooded across the Hollywood Hills and washed up against them like a hot dry ocean, threatening the alien darkness that was flooding in from the sky.

From where his head and uppermost body were coiled, the White Serpent’s body now stretched curving like a mighty silvery river right away into the distance of that vast landscape, as if it might stretch right around that world. Maybe it did; World Serpent was one of the shapes that Ith wore since delivering his people. But the anchoring he had built with his wizardry and now mediated in his own person was founded in more than just the idea that he might be spiritually or even physically wrapped around Earth’s old dream of itself. However the reality of Earth might quake, the Old Downside should not. Here there was only one continent, one vast plate with nothing else to grind against: and it stood fast.

Helen Walks Softly stepped out into that light, out onto what previously had been empty air but was now hot dry summer grassland. She lifted the condor-feather wands high on either side of her and began addressing the circles of the world in long, intricate words of song, not in the Speech, but in her own Chumash language. All around her, an impossibly deep echo of the words went up as if from the earth itself.“’Alchup’osh, White Serpent, Sky Serpent, Hutash speaks to you! Once more I’ve made the world from the Seeds of the World for our children – “

The power amassing around her, reinforcing Ith’s wizardry, was impossible not to feel. Helen didn’t stop her song or turn away from her regard of the West; but Rhiow heard her say silently, Rhi, this is as good as it’s going to get right now — !

Rhiow licked her nose one last time and spoke to the angry presence inside her. Elder Sister… let’s take this rat by the throat!

Yes, said sa’Rraah. Now. And if Rhiow had thought the Lone One’s presence in her before was difficult to take, now she knew better. It had taken sa’Rraah a few moments to consolidate her presence inside Rhiow properly and get Her teeth into the scruff of her soul. But now Rhiow felt as if she was simply being exploded from within. Her perspective on everything around her whited out, skewed, then resettled. Suddenly her eyes were on a level with the dark sphere and the pre-sentient un-stuff boiling out of it. She was larger than that, even; Rhiow found herself also seeing the world as if from a great height, and her mighty body crouched over the whole Los Angeles basin as if over some prey that she’d caught. There she towered up over the world, radiant with a pure and terrible darkness, the Fairest and Fallen indeed: but regardless of the Fall, she was still the Queen’s daughter, still in full possession of the glory of a God when She wanted or needed it. Now, in the face of the Outside One, sa’Rraah wore that glory for once not as a badge of insolence in her Dam’s face, but merely as identification, an ostensible mark of respect to a being more powerful than she. She bowed Her head humbly, for once playing the jackal instead of the outcast Queen of the Pride.

Above them the darkness continued boiling in through the incursion hypersphere’s surface from Outside, and Rhiow for the first time realized that only just now — when something with the power of a god manifested before It — had the Outside One’s attention actually been drawn to them. Even now It did not speak; it was the opposite of life and thought. But nonetheless It made Itself understood. Give me the gift You promised. Give me entry into matter, that I may abolish it, and end this rebellion from within, and be All.

“Here,” sa’Rraah said through Rhiow, and the hills around them shuddered with the power of Her words. “Here is the weak point, the way to the throat of the prey. Join with me and I will show you, and all this will be Yours.”

Everyone and everything seemed to hold its breath as the Outside One reached out to sa’Rraah discover the way into the world of matter. It meant holding still and allowing Oneself to be felt and fondled over by that terrible slithering touch, something that invaded her body’s matter in awful analysis. Away back in the core of herself that was still wholly a Person and a wizard, Rhiow turned her whole being to the purpose of holding still and letting the violation happen, horrified beyond all reason but still strangely satisfied. It and sa’Rraah are of one mind about matter, she thought. And It’ll share her blind spot. They see matter as contemptible, and this is why Its avatar Tepeyollotl always sought to shatter the Earth – because like sa’Rraah, It takes spirit to be superior.

We’ll see about that –

The violation seemed to go on and on, and Rhiow could do nothing but suffer it. But after endless time, the pain subsided, draining away and leaving her limp and wretched, wishing she could die though totally unable to, with hardly even a thought able to crawl across the pitch-black floor of her mind. For what seemed like forever, nothing happened, nothing at all, as the Outside One examined what It had learned.

And then It took the bait. It started pouring itself into sa’Rraah, and into Rhiow. As it began to manifest within them, the Outside One took the nature of matter to it, and wrapped that matter around itself, and started to become a physical thing inside the world.

Rhiow was now beyond any further reaction except a silent scream of pain and horror that bid fair to last forever. She had been afraid that sa’Rraah might not set her free again after their ploy succeeded, or at least allow her the mercy of death. Now she realized that sa’Rraah was screaming too, screaming along with Rhiow at a violation She found as horrifying as Rhiow had found the earlier one. She began to wonder whether even the Lone One had miscalculated, had overestimated her ability to beguile this force of unnature. Will we be trapped together like this forever? Or just cast aside and destroyed, both of us, when It’s got what It wants and we’re not needed any more —

There was no seeing anything in such a state; perception was all that was left, and even sa’Rraah’s perception was blurred by pain and terror now. But Rhiow knew that outside them, above them, the newly incarnated Outside One was taking on a shape like the Lone One’s, like Rhiow’s, but even huger and more terrible. The Black Leopard — Tepeyollotl no more Its mere avatar, but now truly containing its progenitor from Outside — loomed over Los Angeles, its great, hating, hungry eyes looking down at Earth, and beyond it, at the rest of Earth’s universe and all the worlds beyond, straight across the khiliocosm.

Everything cowered. Right across the planet, right across the worlds, the structure of space and the fabric of time themselves crouched down low in the darkness and looked up into it fearfully, hearing the long slow snarl of the Hunter as it bent low over them, about to open the jaws of its great yawning maw to snap them up at last and swallow them down into the dark.

But down on the terrace outside the Observatory, one patch of light remained, flowing to it from away westward in a narrow corridor where another dimension’s landscape still obtained, even under that world-ending regard. The substance and will of the World Serpent were sunk deep into that corridor of power. And though his body between Earth and the Old Downside was pulled unbearably taut, Ith’s radiant upper coils were cast around the whole fabric of the Observatory, anchoring and his jaws locked around the next coil down as his eyes blazed with an ebony fire of certainty and rage. I – shall not – be moved –!

Rhiow and sa’Rraah could feel Ith bunching every muscle to resist the abolishing power of the great hating eyes that hung in the heavens, all the length of his body rigid with the inconceivable strain of holding a world in place. Now – would be a good time! he said silently to Rhiow.

Not yet! sa’Rraah cried. It’s not finished becoming physical yet! Just a little more –

Yet the shattering that Tepeyollotl most desired, the precursor of the worse destruction to follow, was already beginning. Rhiow could hear it starting at the roots of things— a tremor in the earth that would build and build until all the land shattered and was overturned, until all the seas ran into the cracks and boiled away in the mantle-deep cracks that would burst open right across the planet. That shattering wave would run straight away from here through space and time, breaking everything it met, shattering it right down to the atoms; and even the particles of dust that remained would themselves be swallowed up into the fissures that would open in space’s own structure. In time those too would close, and there would simply be nothing… nothing but theOutside One, now Inside forever, Deity by default of a dead and empty cosmos.

Against that, though, Ith still strove. And Helen kept singing to the West as if the Old Downside was a frightened animal.“Sky Serpent, ’Alchup’osh,” she was singing, “once more give the children the gift you once gave them – “

The shaking didn’t stop, but at least it didn’t get any worse. It’s all that can be done right now! sa’Rraah said silently to Rhiow, though She too was writhing in anguish. No active attack until It’s all here, until the connection can’t be broken –

How much longer? Rhiow cried.

The earth under the Observatory rocked. Ith hung on, but Rhiow could feel the strain, feel him starting to slip–

Suddenly the earthquake broke out in full force, a roar that began to scale up and up to the point where nothing else could be heard, not even one’s own thoughts. In the sky over Los Angeles, the Leopard went jet-black and real, and Its eyes poured out a light that was itself destruction as that final roar of triumph and hatred rang out and filled the whole physical universe.

Now, something whispered in Rhiow’s ear: to her surprise, not sa’Rraah. And something Person-shaped and burning white went past her like lightning, and caught Tepeyollotl by the throat, knocking it onto the floor of Creation.

Rhiow, joined all against her will with a God, realized that she had now been caught up into that far more central level of being where the Gods have their dwelling, and their wars. With a yowling that broke even through the echo of the destruction trying to unleash itself on the planes below, Queen Iau in her full majesty, in lioness-shape and blinding as a star, roared and tore at the Outside One in its form of Black Leopard. To that fight too came Aaurh the Mighty with the untempered fires of creation wreathed about Her, and beside Her the Whisperer slender and deadly as an unsheathed claw, and with them even the Great Tom, black and scarred and one-eyed, the other Eye fully open and blazing now, and every claw alive with lightning from the birth of things. All of them attacked the Leopard together. Its scream, and their battle roars, went up until they seemed to fill the whole world. And sa’Rraah, dark-pelted like Rhiow now, flung herself into that fight as well, intent on tearing out the throat of the enemy before which She had been forced to humiliate herself.

Never before had all the Pride of Heaven gone into the fight together against a foe from outside. Now as one They attacked the monstrous horror from Outside, and tore it with teeth and claws.

But it was far bigger than They were. And Rhiow, carried along with sa’Rraah into the center of that battle, went cold with fear.

One more thing is needed, said the soft voice inside her brain. Let’s hope it’s enough —

Out beyond the Observatory terrace, Helen Walks Softly lifted the condor-feather wands over her head in the face of the awful black countenance staring down from the sky. A shadow fell even over the narrow corridor of light leading back to the Old Downside: the shadow of vast wings. Under their shadow, the wind started to rise, running down the canyons like the Santa Ana. Now let the Nine-Wind God come to the place of the Serpent Rope—

For just a flash those wings, half-seen in the sky, covered everything with a cleaner shadow than what streamed away from the Outside One. And in answer, lightning struck out of that shadow, lashing down like whips all over the high ridges and mountains surrounding the basin. Smoke began rising, and the dim red eyes of flame opened in the brush on the hillside, growing stronger and brighter with every breath.

And with those few breaths the lightning became more focused, more accurate, and did not strike the hillsides any more. A huge thick bolt like a whip braided of fire struck the Black Leopard right between the eyes. It yowled in pain and rage, and with the pain, surprise. Pain had apparently not occurred to It. More lightning leapt out of the air and began to strike it again and again. There’s a little distraction for you, cousins, Helen said. Make the most of it, because I don’t know how long it’s going to last!

Over in the spell-circle, Urruah and Aufwi and Hwaith exchanged glances. Ready?

Ready–

Ready!

Sif?

Get on with it!

The three toms reached out of the confinement enclosures where they stood inside the spell-circle, and each gathered to him like an armful of guy-wires a bundle of hyperstrings that had been tethered to the floor of the spell. The secondary strings that defined the synchronization between the LA gate and the incursion gate, still burning black above them, sprang into visibility. Hastily the three of them started to pull on the three sets of strings.

There was nothing easy about it. Slowly, like a tethered zeppelin, the black gate started drifting toward them: but it resisted them, and at one point simply refused to drift any closer to the LA gate and the spell circle. The Black Leopard had noticed it. But it was twisting and yowling under an increasing onslaught of lightnings, and caught up in a battle on another plane.

There was no telling how much longer this state would last, however. From her little spell-dome, Siffha’h looked over at Arhu.

Do it now! he said.

No, Aufwi yowled, we’re not ready!If it’s not inside the circle, we can’t be sure of the synch —

Urruah glanced around at the Leopard, then back up at the black gate. I wouldn’t wait, he said. Sif, go!

The dome under which she had been sitting and watching her claudication-pearl winked out. Siffha’h seized the pearl in her mouth, not wanting to trust its management to levitation under the circumstances, and bounded across the circle to where Urruah and Aufwi and Hwaith were desperately trying to reel the hyperstrings in. Right up Urruah’s bunch of strings Siffha’h ran, and paused there, balancing precariously, as the black gate was slowly dragged closer to the spell-circle’s edge.

Around them, the lightning licked and flashed at the hillcrests as the Black Leopard’s seeming fixed on them and tried to move closer. Hurry up! Siffha’h yelled.

None of the toms answered her. Like the others, Urruah was clawing the hyperstrings closer to him in armfuls, as if climbing a tree. They vanished into the spell structure behind him, and slowly, slowly the black gate drifted closer–

Siffha’h balanced, wavered as the strings were pulled under her, and almost fell – then caught herself and took four or five hurried steps up the string bundle again, sinking in her claws, hanging on. The black gate was almost up against the spell-circle’s border now. Behind them, the Leopard roared and everything shook again –

Sif!

She didn’t bother answering Arhu’s desperate shout. Siffha’h ran up the string bundle nearly to where it anchored into the structure of the black gate, near the bottom of the portal, and there again she clung and waited –

The gate’s interface butted into the spell-circle’s boundary… and then, an eternal few seconds later, through it.

Siffha’h spat the little glowing pearl into the gate locus. The pearl vanished into its darkness.

Get down! she yowled, and turned to leap down into the circle.

As she hit the ground, Urruah had just time enough to turn around and leap onto the control section of the spell that broke the connections to the black gate. Aufwi let go the strings he was holding, reared up and came down on the separate section that activated the circle’s protective shield. Then, looking around, Aufwi’s jaw dropped. Urruah!

Urruah turned to look.

Hwaith was gone—

Everything whited out as the black gate blew.

Deeper in reality, the battle went on, Queen Iau and her Mate and children tore at the Black Leopard’s essence, seemingly without effect. That darkness now reared above them, growing greater until one of its paws was the size of the Queen or the Great Tom. Aaurh the Mighty charged It, roaring, but the roar was lost in the earthquake-thunder, and it swept Her aside like a kitten. Sa’Rraah leapt at Its throat and clung there, biting deep, but It shook Her off like a rat. In front of It, Queen Iau crouched down and readied Herself for one more spring, though it seemed hopeless –

And suddenly the whole ground of being in that place flickered, as if a wave of some kind had run through the air. It passed over all the Pride without effect. But when it had passed, the Black Leopard looked somehow less definite, somehow diminished. And a moment later it stared at itself in astonishment and rage, for it was once more no bigger than the Queen.

“So,” Queen Iau said, and leapt. And this time, caught by the throat, the Black Leopard screamed and went down.

The Pride followed to finish off the Queen’s enemy. Squealing in pain, flailing in horror, the Outside One began to come apart beneath their teeth and claws. It shredded away like cloud before wind, in tatters and patches, as the connection to its power was lost. Tepeyollotl the Eater was vanishing now as It had in Its time made others vanish: for it was now just a physical thing. Methodically, tempering Their rage now – for there was no need for it – the divine Pride abolished the Outside One as It would have abolished Them and everything else.

And the floors of Heaven shone clean and empty except for the Pride, who stood panting and scarred on the floor of Heaven, looking at one another.

“My Daughter,” Queen Iau said, “well done. “

“Yes,” sa’Rraah said, “it is.” And without another word she flung herself at her Mother’s throat.

They rolled over and over the floors of existence together, the Lone One kicking at her Dam’s guts and tearing at Her with Her claws, during this one moment when the One might be slightly less than omnipotent. Rhiow, now separate again from the Lone One with the destruction of the black gate and the dissolution of the conditions that had prompted their joining, stood aside on the floorof Heaven and yowled in distress at what she had inadvertently brought about. No, this wasn’t supposed to happen, no!

But the Queen rose up and threw sa’Rraah aside – and as she did so, without warning a dark shape came shouldering past Rhiow and leapt onto sa’Rraah in turn. For several of those eternal moments Rhiow could only watch in astonishment as the Great Tom caught sa’Rraah Herself by the scruff and slammed her down against the dark floor of their conjunct mind, digging his claws in behind her shoulders and pinning her so that She didn’t even dare writhe or struggle to get away.

Out! He yowled.

A moment later, She had fled.

Only then did He look back at Rhiow. Only then did she see the one dark eye… and the one bronze one. She stared.

Queen Iau shook Herself all over, glancing in an idle way at the bright fur on her back, still roused a little with the annoyance of the fight, and then strolled over to Rhiow and Hwaith. Behind her, the Whisperer and Aaurh the Mighty came along like good pride-daughters, already healed of the scars They had acquired in the fight, and looking a little curiously at the Great Tom.

Hwaith in the Tom’s person flicked an ear at the Queen. Madam, he said.

She eyed him with amusement, then looked at Rhiow. It seems that your friend learned something from the bargain you and my Eldest Daughter struck, Queen Iau said.

Rhiow was still thunderstruck.

The Tom and I spoke, Madam, Hwaith said. I couldn’t stay: I had to come here to make sure that all went well. And he looked at Rhiow. My Royal Sire was willing to allow me to join him and assist him… after some encouragement.

Rhiow’s eyes went wide.

Iau’s whiskers went forward. Mostly, my son, she said, it’s wiser to keep such assistance to a minimum. We are in very special circumstances here: but your body will not be able to bear much more. You should go.

She waved Her tail at them. Go on, she said. On this plane and on others, there’s a lot of cleaning up to do. But we’ll talk again.

Rhiow and Hwaith bowed to the Queen, and vanished–

…back into reality.

Rhiow sat up straight as a Person will who’s dozed off sitting up, and stared around her in near-panic at the thought of what she might find. The air was full of dust and smoke and the smell of burning, but empty of that loathsome dark curdling that had sucked the life and color out of everything up here. Normal evening was reasserting itself, though after a quake of this size there was understandably little else that was normal about the night. Cracks spread all across the Observatory terrace’s paving, and all around Rhiow could hear little rustles of falling dirt from tiny landslides in the canyons down the mountain’s side, as the abused earth tried to settle itself down. That wasn’t going to happen for a while yet: right then an aftershock shook the ground under her paws.

But Rhiow, who just a few days before had clung to a tree limb like a scared squirrel on feeling such a thing, now hardly noticed it at all as she stared around. There was Ith, sitting down on his haunches by the north-facing Observatory wall. There were Urruah and Aufwi sitting shocked-looking in the middle of the now deactivated spell-circle, talking excitedly to each other, and Siffha’h, looking very smug as she sat and had a wash: and Helen Walks Softly, sitting on one of the white granite park benches near the edge of the terrace, taking the condor feathers out of her hair.

And sitting by himself only a few feet away, in the shadow of the white granite obelisk and just under the majestic robed form of some ehhif physicist, was Hwaith…looking at her.

“Oh, what did you do,” Rhiow said to Hwaith. “What did you do!”

“What I had to,” Hwaith, said, “for my queen.”

Rhiow went straight to him and butted his head, hard. Abashed, he started washing Rhiow’s ear.

She let him.

The Big Meow: Chapter Thirteen

The cleanup was going to take days: that much was obvious from the start. Not even half the world’s wizards could develop a custom timepatch for such a cosmically destabilizing event, and implement it, in a hurry. But that was not Rhiow’s problem, and for that night at least she was glad to let it be someone else’s.

They made their way back to the Silent Man’s house via transit circle, since every bit of strictly physical movement through this space would add to the already significant difficulties that would accompany the patching. While Aufwi was building the circle, though, Rhiow paused with Urruah to look westward. The Old Downside, having done its job and kept the solid earth solid, was gone now, and the Pacific was once more lying in its bed. But over on Cahuenga Peak, the results of other events of the evening were plain to see. That white sign that Urruah had made so much of earlier when they’d landed under it had not escaped the attention of the angry skies. HOLLYWOODLAND it had said earlier. But now by cityglow they could see how the last four letters lay shattered and smoking on the ground, and the brush they’d fallen onto smouldered yet. “Oh dear,” Rhiow said. “That’s probably going to take a while to fix.”

Urruah, though, was looking across at the broken word, and his whiskers were pushed right forward.“You know,” he said, “even if they do fix it, somehow I suspect it’s not going to matter…”

They walked away.“What an incredible mess,” Rhiow said. “The patching’s going to be a nightmare.”

Urruah shrugged his tail.“It could have been worse,” he said. “Try patching a whole planet, or a whole region of space. But the Planetary’s on it, and he won’t dawdle: not with as many casualties as there were. Bad enough that they happened, and people suffered them. But after the master patch team’s done, things here will be back to normal instantly… as far as any ehhif here can tell. They’ll just reset the whole LA basin to sunset local time.”

“’Just!””

Urruah chuckled.“I’m not minimizing the work involved,” he said. “But it beats the alternative…”

“No argument,” Rhiow said.

Aufwi finished the circle, and everyone crowded into it, even Ith, who curled his tail carefully into it with a sigh, and Arhu promptly walked up it and sat on his head again. A second later they were in the Silent Man’s back yard, and he came out the French doors and looked at them, shaking his head.

I did not think I was going to see you people again, he said. When the hillside started falling down, I pretty much thought that was it. Yet it didn’t fall down, quite. Or on any of the other houses around here.

“Oh well,” Arhu said, clambering down off Ith again and heading for the house with his tail up, “we didn’t want to mess things up too much.” He paused by the Silent Man and gave him a sassy look. “But you should have some better cracks in your front walk now.”

To Rhiow’s astonishment, and also to Arhu’s, the Silent Man picked Arhu up and dangled him in front of him like a doll, grinning from ear to ear. And I thought I was a cat person before, he said. I want to hear about everything that happened. But first you should all come in and have something to eat.

There was no arguing with that. They did.

The storytelling went on late into the night, despite how wrecked the wizardly exertions should normally have left them all.“I have a feeling,” Helen said, stretched out luxuriously again on the white couch with Sheba on her lap, “that the Queen has been busy awarding dispensations of energy to the deserving…”

The Silent Man had been taking notes nonstop for at least three hours when they ran out of details for him, or at least details that would make sense. He looked at the pile of flip-notebook pages full of shorthand and shook his head, and stretched, being careful to avoid Ith’s head where it lay sticking into the living room through the open French doors. I have no idea what to make of most of this.

“I’m not sure we do either,” Urruah said. “It’s going to take a year’s worth of digesting.”

But will I be able to do that? the Silent Man said. If your‘patching wizards’ are going to put everything back the way it was before the big quake started… will I remember?

“Everything that happened up to then, surely,” Arhu said. “But you might want to leave town before the reset… and take your notes with you. Otherwise you won’t know how it came out.”

“I’ll let you know when it’s about to happen,” Hwaith said.

The Silent Man looked surprised. What– you’re not going back to the future with Blackie?

Rhiow looked away.“No,” Hwaith said. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way.” He was sitting up with his tail curled around his toes: now he became very interested in the end of the tail. “Sometimes we just have to do our job, that’s all.”

The Silent Man said nothing for a while. Then he looked at Rhiow. I need to let you know, he said, that the tinkering you did with my innards has just about worn off. That tells me that it’s about time I left town and headed back east. He glanced around. Sheba and I were just about finished with this town, anyway….

“There’s no harm in letting you know,” Urruah said, “that they won’t be finished with you for a long, long time. And you’ll make a lot of ehhif happy over time.”

The Silent Man bowed to him from where he sat in the wooden chair by the desk. There is no higher praise, he said.

Urruah sighed.“Someone’s going to have to go get the gate set up for the slide tomorrow.”

“That’ll be me,” Hwaith said. He glanced around at the others. “I’d sooner not move it: there are diagnostics to do, and anyway the patching teams wouldn’t thank me – “

“Hwaith, don’t bother,” Aufwi said. “I’ll handle it. You get some rest.” He glanced around at the others. “No point in wishing anyone the luck of the hunt: we’ve had it! I’ll see you all in the morning. Two hours after Eyerise?

“That sounds fine,” Rhiow said.

Aufwi vanished.

And what about you? the Silent Man said to Helen Walks Softly. What about your film career? What about your agent?

“I’ve already called him,” Helen said. “I’ve explained an urgent need to go home to see relatives in the Midwest. Which I do really have.” She smiled. “He made up half the story for himself before I could even finish misdirecting him – he’s used to having starlets break without warning under the strain of public attention.” Helen shrugged, and then smiled a little sadly. “I will miss LA, though. This LA. It’s been… a trip down Memory Lane.”

The Silent Man nodded slowly: then stood up at last. No long goodbyes, he said, and looked around at them all. If I don’t see you in the morning — I’ll see you in the papers.

“Not the funny ones?” Urruah said.

The Silent Man smiled. Never my style, he said.

He went from one to another of the People, petting them goodbye, and finally stopped by Rhiow. Don’t suppose you’d thank me if I picked you up and held you upside down… he said.

She dropped her jaw at him in the human-smile gesture.“Perhaps not,” she said. “Go very well, cousin; see you around the Worlds.” Who knows, it might be true…

He stroked her head, then straightened up to take Helen’s hand. You would’ve been great in the movies… he said. Oh well. Be a good cop.

“That’s the way I roll,” Helen said. “Go well…”

The Silent Man picked up the sleepy Sheba and headed down the bare little hall, and the bedroom door closed behind him.

“I don’t know about you,” Rhiow said, “but I’m ready for my nap.” She glanced idly over the others, but not too closely, all too aware of the sorrow or pity they were keeping from showing in their eyes, and unwilling to see it surface to everyone’s embarrassment. “Hwaith?” she said, turning to him. “A last debrief?”

“Of course,” he said.

And the two of them walked down the hall to the guest bedroom, tails high, as if everything was fine.

They were, after all, People.

Much later, in the guest bedroom, Rhiow was lying on the broad windowsill, looking out into the dark: and Hwaith was beside her, sprawled, snoring gently.

It was all over; over at last. Yet now there was something that wasn’t over. Or over before it’s fairly begun…

Rhiow looked out the window into the street, where in other houses lights were ablaze as people picked up after the quake. To think, she thought, that I sat there telling the story of Aifheh and Sehau so casually. How did I never see that this was coming for me?

Yet now that she did, she felt unable to know how to react, like some Person who’s never seen traffic before and freezes in the middle of the road when she sees the first headlights. I’m caught in something that sounds just like a Middle Lives tale for the Two of them, Rhiow thought. For there were endless variations of the basic story, regional variations, some of them even verging on the comedic – since when the Two began playing sa’Rrahh’s ugly Play back at her, humor was unquestionably part of the strand.

Then why doesn’t this feel funny, Rhiow thought. After tomorrow morning – this morning! – we won’t see each other again. The Powers don’t permit casual commuting between the past and the future: there’s too much chance of one contaminating the other. So forget about that.

And as for other possible remedies… Rhiow’s tail lashed. Our times are too far apart. Even if Hwaith wanted to stay for me, tried to stay for me, as Sehau did for Aifheh… The distance in moons is just too far. No one could do it. The winds at the edge of Life would sweep any Person-to-be over the border into Itself eventually. And even if he had more lives to spend, and every one of them should last as long as it possibly could before the body breaks down at last… he still couldn’t do it. The time between us is just too wide.

And why would he want to do it? He met me three days ago, as his time goes! He can’t possibly know what he wants in so short a time.

Though he says he does…

Impossible as that seemed, perhaps he did. If so, it just made the story worse, especially as she was herself trapped right in the middle of the tragedy of it, and was understanding its issues better than she ever had. So very unconcerned she’d been about the tale in past years: one more legend, one more part of an educated Person’s knowledge – and nothing to do with her, since she was long ago safely spayed. But now the reality had her by the scruff indeed, and though she might kick and yowl as she liked, there was no escaping it.

And possibly the worst aspect of the whole situation was that even with this sudden unseasonable longing rearing up inside her, there was nothing Rhiow could do about it. No kittens for you, she thought. Not even wizardry could grow back a womb for them to kindle in now: your body’s become too used to the way things have been for all these years. It would quickly reject any attempt to clone new material from neighboring tissue. And the ovaries were gone too: so no chance ever again to experience the ecstasies of heat, the mad hormone-driven flirtations, the chase and the always-intended capture, the hot flush of satisfaction after fulfillment. And to think how I teased Siffha’h about this. Well, that’s come back to bite me hard now.

Rhiow squeezed her eyes shut and crouched there in the dark for a long time.

Dear Queen about us, what do I do?!

No answer. But that was the problem with serving a deity who was also a Person. Independence, the right to make one’s own choice no matter how far down the scale of power you were, was always a given. In the legend, everything had rested on sa’Rraah’s freedom to come and go, and Her casual choice an aeon ago to wander back to the much-missed Hearth and taunt Queen Iau one more time. Without that freedom, there would be no tenth life, no chance for immortality.

And we have no way to be sure of that chance, Rhiow thought, miserable in the darkness, shivering with anguish. There’s no way to tell if it that last Life will ever be offered, or even achieved, no matter how hard you strive for it. Like wizardry itself, it comes or it doesn’t… and that’s just the way things are.

Rhiow lay there, feeling the claw in her heart, and knew whose it was. Even after everything that’s happened, she said to sa’Rraah, you’re not off my case, are you?

After what you and I have just been through, said the Lone Power, what would you expect? How should I allow a mortal to put me through such indignity without suffering for it?And anyway… this was all about putting things back to the way they usually are. Now you will have your wish. Make the best of it.

She fell silent.

“Rhiow…”

He stretched, looking at her, the bronzy eyes pale in the reflected glow from the streetlights outside.

“For the Queen’s sake don’t apologize,” she said.

“I wasn’t planning to. I’m done with that. The way things are… is the way things are.”

She bent down and rubbed his face against his: but then she had to stop.

“Will you stay a little while longer?” he said. “Just another day or two – “

“I can’t,” Rhiow said. “You know I can’t. It’s not just the issue of the timeslide, and the buildup of the effects of being out of my right time – though that’s part of it. If I stay longer, it’s just going to be harder for both of us. We should take pity on each other and end it now.”

He sighed.“She does love her little vengeances,” Hwaith said, “doesn’t she.”

“Yes she does,” Rhiow said, and looked away from Hwaith, finding it difficult to bear the pain in his eyes, which he was trying to manage for her sake.

“Well then,” Hwaith said. “It’ll just have to be another life, then.”

“So it seems,” Rhiow said, doing her best to sound cheerful.

“All right,” Hwaith said. “Then let’s cuddle.”

She fell asleep on the windowsill as she had never fallen asleep with another Person: with one of Hwaith’s forelegs thrown over her, protective, something she’d seen Arhu and Sif do. At first she found it hard to bear. Then Rhiow put her own foreleg over his and hugged it to her. This is going to have to last, she said. There’s always memory, at least.

It was cold comfort. But sometimes, after saving the world, that was all you had left.

Dawn came too soon. Two hours later came too soon.

But two hours later they were all standing outside the Observatory as the sun looked over the low mountains to the east, and struck fire from the sundial by the white obelisk. It was still too early for ehhif tourists— not that there were likely to be any here this morning, considering what the night before had been like – and the worldgate lay out on the terrace again, just by itself now and not enclosed in any unnecessary spell-structure.

“I set it up for Grand Central in our time,” Aufwi said: “easier to drop everyone in the same place when there’s a timeslide hooked into the weave. The track 33 off-hours access area, an hour after you left the original uptime coordinates be all right for everybody?”

“Fine,” Rhiow heard Urruah say. It was not fine with her: nothing seemed fine at the moment. She stood off to one side with Hwaith, looking at the gate, even though there was nothing she wanted to look at less – except perhaps Hwaith’s eyes.

He put his head up against hers. You should go, he said silently.

No I shouldn’t! Rhiow cried. …Except I must.

Aufwi glanced at them, no more; then away again. Quietly the air went prickly with the feel of a gate going active when it had a timeslide augmentation.

Hwaith pushed his face in front of hers so that she couldn’t avoid seeing it. Cousin and love, he said, …go well.

Cousin, Rhiow said. And love. Always go well.

With you wishing it so, Hwaith said, it has to be.

And he turned his face away.

Rhiow walked over to the gate more unwillingly than she had ever gone anywhere in her life. Helen, in LAPD uniform again, was stepping through as she came up: Arhu and Ith went through after her, and then Siffha’h. Urruah glanced over his shoulder and went through, followed by Aufwi. By the gate, knowing it would close after her, Rhiow paused as Hwaith came along behind her.

“Don’t forget to disengage the slide conduit before you close it down,” she said.

“Rhiow,” Hwaith said. “Am I a complete idiot? …Just go.”

“Yes,” she said.

She took one last long glance, one that was going to have to last her a lifetime: then turned and stepped through.

A second later she was surrounded by the sooty, metal-smelling dark of the track 33 platform-end, all full of locked empty postal parcel cages and little pallet-moving trucks. Rhiow had seen this spot a thousand times, and it now all looked inexpressibly alien to her— dirty and unfriendly and miserable. Around her, her team and Ith and Helen were looking up and down the platform, making sure of their own personal invisibility routines before stepping out into the public areas.

Helen Walks Softly smiled at them all.“My cousins, we’ll meet again on the journey, I know,” she said. “But I shouldn’t linger: I have a shift this evening.”

Urruah glanced across at the ehhif clock up against the wall to which the postal cages were chained.“If you pop over to 25,” he said, “the local to Croton will be out of there in about two minutes. The gate comes unshielded as soon as it pulls out.”

“Perfect. All of you – go well!”

“Wait for me,” Aufwi said. “I’ll come with you. Rhiow – Urruah – “

“You’re entirely welcome, cousin,” Rhiow said. “Soon again…”

He headed off after Helen; the two of them vanished into the dark at the end of the platform.

“So much for that,” Siffha’h said, and headed out into the Main Concourse. But Arhu and Ith lingered a moment longer, and Arhu – on top of Ith’s head as usual — went unfocused for a moment before looking down at his counterpart suddenly. “Pastrami?” he said.

“Indubitably,” said Ith.

They vanished.

Rhiow and Urruah were left looking at each other in the noisy dark.“Do you want me to walk home with you?” Urruah said.

“No,” Rhiow said, “it’s all right. I know, ‘Ruah. I’ll be ready to talk about it soon enough. But not just now.”

She sidled herself and headed out into the Concourse. Sif had already taken herself somewhere else, and for all she knew, Arhu and Ith were probably on the upper West Side by now. Out into the busy bustle and stir of ehhifkind Rhiow took herself, and it all sounded just like so much noise to her as she made her way out the station’s side entry and onto Lexington.

She made herself do the walk the long way to the upper East Side, hoping that it would ground her a little. But it was a long way, a hard way, harder than she ever remembered it having been, even right after Hhuha died. Everything seemed as colorless as when the One Outside had been sucking the life out of the landscape. But, This is temporary, Rhiow told herself. You have been through an extraordinary thing. The reaction is normal. This will pass.

She simply couldn’t believe it.

At last Rhiow came to the corner of the street where her ehhif’s apartment building lay, and walked down past the little skinny fenced-in trees, the brownstone doorsteps, the vans making deliveries, the queen-ehhif pushing strollers. None of it meant a thing to her. She came at last to the apartment gate where the garbage cans were locked up until collection day, spoke by rote the air-hardening spell she used every day, and walked up the air to where Iaehh’s apartment’s terrace stuck out. Weary to the bone, she headed toward it…

…and saw that there was someone in her litterbox.

Rhiow froze.

The dusty black shape had its back turned to her, and was scratching busily. Rhiow stood there on the air staring at him as inside her began to grow a joy so extreme that it was very like terror. She was unable to believe what she was seeing, unable to believe what had happened—

Surprise, said sa’Rraah in Rhiow’s ear.

Rhiow sat right down on the air in shock.

You did me a favor, sa’Rraah said. It was with your help that I drove out the one who would have destroyed my universe, and my plans… and Me. So I have done a little favor for you, and did not too quickly sweep across the border into Life a soul that, having come to the end of its current life some time back, very much wanted not to be born just yet. Or indeed for some while. Or at all, until somebody else arrived.

Rhiow held very still, hearing more in the silence that followed the Lone One’s words than she might possibly wish.

I will grant you, sa’Rraah said, sounding just a touch cranky, he was more than usually persistent about staying on the other side. But without My help, he could not have remained. You may now thank me.

Rhiow knew better than most what the next move in the dance usually was. Yet today… today everything was different. It was all about chances: the possibility to do something a different way… and not crush out even what might seem like just a tiny spark of light in the darkness. And what do I owe you for this favor? she said at last.

Nothing… just this once. Did you not help Me and My pride, defend what is ours from the interloper? Be warned: after today, all is as it was. But for today… I remember that you helped me keep what is Mine.

Rhiow was silent a moment. Litter-sister, she said then,…I do thank you. So now I go. And may you also go well.

Sa’Rraah made her no answer.

But now I want to talk to your mother!!

There was a short pause. Arhu knew, Rhiow thought suddenly. He knew as soon as we got here, that’s where the sudden urge for pastrami came from —

But daughter, Queen Iau said quietly, surely you too might have known. After the part you played, at so central a level– and that Hwaith then played in order to be with you — surely you might have suspected that however well or ill-disposed She was toward you, sa’Rraah would discover that there would be no keeping you two from one another. For one lifetime – nine – ten – or however many…

The shock and relief were such that Rhiow could have lain right down and yowled. But this seemed the wrong moment. She pulled herself together and tried for some kind of composure. But what came out was,“After what we’ve just been through, I want a holiday!”

She was expecting an argument. What she wasn’t expecting was to hear the Queen of the Universe say, Done. How long?

That brought Rhiow up short. First and foremost, she was a wizard. For as long as the sabbatical lasted, she would be walking away from any chance of active assignment. And though there were times she hated admitting it, active assignment was fun.

Her tail lashed.“I’ll tell You when I’m ready to come back,” Rhiow said.

Well enough, said the Queen. Anything else?

“…I can’t think of anything right now,” Rhiow said. “But I may later.”

Let me know when you do, said Iau.

Rhiow’s ears went back and forth in a momentary flicker of suspicion. “Royal Dam and Queen,” she said, “You’re being unusually accommodating.”

There was a pause before the answer came back from the heart of Creation. Rhiow, she said, you’ve picked up a touch of roughness of manner from My Eldest daughter.

Rhiow declined to allow any embarrassment to show.

Yet that said, said the Queen, if I feel accommodating today, or have a notion to indulge an unusually productive member of My pride… then surely that’s My business. So, as I said: for a little while, when you think of something else — within reason… speak My name.

The sense of quiet approval was overwhelming. Rhiow bowed her head, doing her best to bear it: and silence fell.

Then she turned and ran down the air toward the terrace.“Hwaith!”

He looked up and saw her, and ran up the air to meet her.“Rhiow!!”

They were both sidled, which was just as well. The sight of two black cats leaping on each other in midair, and madly bumping heads and washing each other’s ears, and rolling and tumbling over and over one another as if they were on some kind of invisible floor twelve stories up, would have caused the local ehhif some concern.

“How did you – “

“I told you – “

“You were in my litterbox!”

“Well, I had to go, you wouldn’t want me to just do it there on the concrete – “

“No, I mean you were in it before!”

“Yes. I missed the time. I wanted to see you so very much, and I screwed it up by a few days, I miscalculated, and when I got there you didn’t know me yet – “

“And – wait, I saw you at the Opera! You were looking at me! And I didn’t know you then yet either – Oh, Hwaith, I’m so sorry – “

“What for, it wasn’t your fault!”

More ear-washing ensued. After a while, when the first frenzy of it had calmed a little, Rhiow said, almost nervous to hear the answer,“Hwaith. How many lives did you have to use – “

“Only one,” he said. “It’s hard to remember things from in between, you know how that is… but it seemed to me that when I felt I might have to cross over, something …interfered.”

“And you’ve been here a while – “

“Some years,” he said.

“Such a long time to wait…”

“It was all right,” Hwaith said. “I knew you were coming. I saw you sometimes, from a distance. That always made me feel better. And anyway, after today, it doesn’t feel like a long time at all.” He put his whiskers forward at her. “So can you use a spare gate technician? I’m told that though I’m out of practice, my proficiency rating’s still satisfactory.”

She bumped her head so hard into his that the sound echoed.“Idiot,” she said. “What I can use right now is a tom. My tom. We’ll discuss your other proficiencies later. Meantime, let’s go home!”

They headed down to the terrace and unsidled. Rhiow went through the cat flap in the sliding door first, to show Hwaith the way. Iaehh was home, as Rhiow had half thought he might be, and in the kitchen. He looked over at her without surprise and said,“Well, there you are! Hungry, plumptious one?”

But then the surprise jumped out all over his face as Hwaith came in through the door and paused there, looking around him uncertainly.

Rhiow looked from the ehhif to her new mate, and back to Iaehh again.

My Queen, she said. You did say if there was anything else—

Yes?

Then one last thing.

Yes?

Here, at the very last moment, for fear of being refused when it was so important, Rhiow found herself actually afraid to speak. But the Queen hears hearts as well as minds.

Seeing as how you’re on sabbatical, said Queen Iau, …just this once.

Rhiow’s whiskers went so far forward that her face felt pulled out of shape. Standing there beside Hwaith, her tail twined with his, Rhiow looked up at Iaehh.

“Iaehh,” she said aloud in the Speech, which even an ehhif could understand — and his eyes went very wide — “He followed me home. Can I keep him?”

Content

Дуэйн Диана The Big Meow