The Big Meow Read online

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

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

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

  “Never,” Hwaith said. He sounded mortified.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Uh, long story,” Helen said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Any quakes there?” Urruah said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Perhaps you might introduce us,” Rhiow said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Good,” Hwaith said. “Very modern.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Look up there!”

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