The Big Meow

“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 –”