The Big Meow Read online

  “For a doll dressed like that she moves fast,” I say to Mike the Mick.

  “This I have seen before,” says Mike. “But there is never anyone there to pick her up in a car, and I sometimes think she must slip into one of the apartment buildings up Highland, but there is no sign of her doing so, and no one up there seems to know about her, for once or twice when I have a slow lunch hour I go up there to ask a few questions, and no one shows any sign of having been bought off, which I would surely detect by now.”

  So we head back in the direction of the Hollywood Hotel, and Mike the Mick says, “I have seen the Lady in Black three months running now, and I do not know whether I should buy some more umbrellas when I see her, or throw them away.” Because as we walk back up the Boulevard, the street where it was raining is now as dry as any number of bones.

  Now we have plenty of ghosts here but none of them can dry the street up after a rain, and I wonder whether the City should try to procure her services in the flood season. Yet if the Lady in Black is in fact producing the rain, then a joe with a smart head could use her to make a lot of moolah out of the LA County Flood Control Board. But no one can catch her long enough to figure out which side she should be working for, or against, which is annoying and also too much like life.

  The Silent Man stopped typing, and stared at the paper.

  Rhiow looked at Hwaith. “I thought you said it wasn’t going to rain until October,” Urruah said.

  Hwaith shrugged his tail. “Poetic license,” he said. “Anyway, it didn’t rain last night. At least, not anywhere else…”

  Rhiow was beyond being all that concerned about the weather. She was bristling still, and still hearing the silent distress of Hrau’f the Silent, of one of the Powers that Be, over something long-dreaded, half-expected, now coming terribly true. In the meantime, the Silent Man had stopped typing, and was staring at the half-finished page in the typewriter. I hate it when these things don’t have an obvious ending… Rhiow heard him think.

  Then Rhiow stepped down onto the Silent Man’s desk, because now – however bizarre it seemed – she understood what she needed to do. She sat down by the right side of the typewriter, and stared at him until he felt the weight of her regard and looked her in the eye.

  “Cousin,” she said in the Speech, “I am on errantry, and in the Queen’s name, I greet you. Now let’s talk business.”

  And the Silent Man didn’t move an inch except that his eyebrows went right up.

  The Big Meow: Chapter Five

  You don’t look English, the Silent Man said.

  Rhiow threw a glance at Urruah. “Did I miss something?” she said.

  Urruah tilted his head to one side, looking thoughtful. But before he could say anything, the Silent Man said, We’ve got a lot of Brits around here. They’re real big on the Queen.

  “Ah,” Rhiow said. “I take your meaning now.” She purred, slightly amused. “You mean the queen-ehhif whose territory includes London. No, sorry, not that Queen. We have one of our own, who is of…for the moment, let’s just say a higher order.”

  Those very cool eyes rested on Rhiow for a moment, and the Silent Man’s hand went off to one side, as if searching for something that wasn’t there. Then he very visibly brought the hand back to rest in front of the typewriter, and put the other hand down on top of it, as if intent on keeping the first one where it was.

  “Am I meant to understand,” Rhiow said, trying not to sound too threatening about it, “that you have no problem with the idea that a cat might be able to speak?”

  Oh, on the contrary, the Silent Man said, I’m thinking that this all probably has something to do with the medication. They keep telling me they’re sure they’ve got the dosage right now; but every time they say that, I get some strange new side effect. He gave Rhiow a rather cockeyed look, though again it had that cool, assessing quality to it. I’ll grant you, though, this side effect’s a lot stranger than some. And I usually don’t get them this late in my day…

  “I’ve been called a lot of things in my time,” Urruah said in the Speech, “but never a side effect.”

  The Silent Man looked at him. One talking cat, he said, might have been an accident. Two starts to look like a coincidence –

  “And three would be enemy action?” Urruah said. I wonder, he added silently for Rhiow’s benefit, should we tell him that’s what we’re here about…?

  I wouldn’t rush that, ‘Ruah. Look at him – he’s a bit on the brittle side, at the moment. And tired. Let the simplest part sink in first.

  The Silent Man laughed, just a barely audible hissing sound. And a smart guy, too, he said to Urruah. Okay, you’re making the case for ‘hallucination’ a whole lot stronger now…

  “I’m sorry if all this strains your sense of your grasp on reality,” Rhiow said, “but sometimes, to keep that reality in good order, such interventions become necessary.” She glanced at the page in the typewriter. “It would seem that you’ve seen something unusual: something that may have a bearing on the reason we’ve come here.”

  The Silent Man leaned back in his wooden typing chair, so that it rocked back a little on its base. He looked from Rhiow to Urruah and back again, and shook his head. I seem to be seeing a lot of unusual today, he said, and rubbed his face with both hands. As he let them fall, for a moment a look of great weariness and pain showed in his eyes: but a second later it had been so completely sealed over that Rhiow wondered for a second whether she had really seen it. So let me get this straight. Cats can talk…

  “Some cats can talk to humans, or ehhif as we call them,” Rhiow said. “Yes.”

  “But only when our business specifically requires it,” Urruah said, “as it does now.”

  Okay. But how come my cat doesn’t talk to me?

  “She doesn’t know the Speech,” Urruah said. “She speaks Ailurin, like most cats do.”

  The Silent Man looked unblinkingly at Urruah. There are two secret cat languages? he said. Oh, come on, now, that’s one too many. What a shame: I was starting to believe you weren’t the drugs talking…

  Urruah’s tail had begun to lash; but Rhiow was amused. “One of the languages is no secret,” she said. “Humans can learn some Ailurin if they’re patient and attentive. Sheba says you know a little of it. The other language, you don’t need to learn. Everything recognizes it: and it’s not just a cat language. It’s the language in which everything was made. Not all cats know it, though – not even most of them.”

  “The way most of the humans you’d meet here don’t speak Italian,” Urruah said.

  The Silent Man gave Urruah a dry look. You’d be surprised how many of the humans I deal with speak Italian, he said. But let it pass. He looked back over at Rhiow again. The expression was strange. So what’s all this about?

  “There are some strange things happening in your city at the moment…” Rhiow said.

  The Silent Man gave her a look. Blackie, he said, this is Hollywood. If strange things didn’t happen here, I’d worry.

  Hwaith snickered. The Silent Man threw him a look. And you, he said. You I’ve seen here before, but you never talked to me.

  “It wasn’t allowed,” Hwaith said. “Now it is.”

  “What we read about in your writing there – “ Urruah said. “That would be one of the things we’re looking into.”

  Why? said the Silent Man.

  Rhiow tucked herself down into what her ehhif usually referred to as “meatloaf” mode. “The explanation may take some time,” she said, “and I have to suggest that you may think it’s something to do with your medication again, as many aspects of it are going to sound bizarre.”

  He smiled again. All right, he said. One thing’s for sure: my medication doesn’t refer to itself as often as you do. And the other things you’re looking into – what would those be?

  Rhiow threw Urruah a look. Keep it simple! she said silently.

  “The earthquakes,” Urruah said.

  At this the Silent
Man actually threw his head back and laughed, though again he produced no sound but a kind of hiss. Rhiow thought of the hissing way Ith laughed, and again nearly bristled, but for a different reason: humans weren’t meant to laugh so. Earthquakes! the Silent Man said, rubbing his eyes again as he recovered his composure a little. They’re just like the weather, aren’t they? Everybody talks about them, but nobody does anything about them…because nobody can. But now here you folks come along, and say you can do something. What do you do?

  “It’s more in the line of prevention than direct intervention, as a rule,” Rhiow said. “Quakes are difficult to stop outright. Also, like forest fires, they have their own reasons for happening – so trying to forestall them too long can be unwise. But the ones you’ve been having lately aren’t natural. We think they may be connected to something else we’re investigating at the moment.”

  I suppose, the Quiet Man said, that it might strain my present credulity too far to inquire what that might be.

  “Maybe we should leave that alone for the moment,” Urruah said.

  Rhiow looked thoughtfully at the Silent Man. “Let’s just say,” she said, “that some of the earthquakes that have occurred recently have a kind of connection to certain places in the city: not merely a physical one. We’re in the process of investigating some of those connections, and the spots to which they’re attached. One of them is quite near here.” She looked over at Hwaith.

  “Within a couple of blocks,” Hwaith said. “Just south of Sunset, near Beverly and Crescent – “

  The Silent Man nodded: though the look he gave them all was a little odd. “And there are several other locations,” Rhiow said, “that we’re going to go have a look at as well. This one was closest; our colleague Hwaith here suggested that we should stop with you first to get the news. And now I see,” and she threw a sidewise glance at Hwaith, “that the choice was wise.”

  So let me see if I’ve got all this straight, the Silent Man said. What we have here is a secret organization of talking cats dedicated to stopping earthquakes…

  Rhiow looked up into the Silent Man’s face, amused: for he wasn’t speaking in mockery. And it was surprising to be looked at with such quick acceptance of her intelligence by an ehhif who was not also a wizard; and not just acceptance, but humor — although the humor was not only dry, but a bit chilly. This was a creature who did not waste time denying reality. Once he had accepted it, he got on with business. But then, Rhiow thought, if I’m any judge, this Silent Man has had entirely too much reality to deal with over the past few years. That look of pain on his face was familiar: she’d seen it in Iaehh’s face too often of late. I must find out more about what’s the matter with him. If he’s going to be of help to us, the least we can do is return the favor.

  “I’d say our remit goes a little further than just earthquakes,” Rhiow said. “Nor does the organization consist only of cats. We and numerous other species, including your own, work together to keeping this world in one piece.”

  I’d say your organization’s had a close call, the last few years, the Silent Man said.

  “I’d say you were right,” Rhiow said. “Many of our people were involved. Many died, trying to prevent what almost happened…and didn’t. We’re busy with that job again; or still. But the scale is considerably larger.”

  Larger than the Second World War? said the Silent Man. …But then, what was it she said? ‘The sheaf of the sheaves of worlds?’ Drunks and crazies repeat themselves, sometimes. But the Lady in Black didn’t look drunk. And crazy… He shook his head. Crazy covers a lot of ground. Especially in this town. His eyes glinted with cynicism. Around here no one notices your crazy much, if your wallet’s fat enough. And there are fat wallets in plenty.

  “That’s another issue,” Hwaith said. “Cults…”

  We’ve got enough of those around here, the Silent Man said. … and I’d be the wrong man to ask why. Lots of people smarter than me have to have been asking themselves that question for years now. Maybe it’s just — He leaned back in his chair, waving his hands in the air in the first really casual gesture that Rhiow had seen him make since he walked in the door. This is California, after all. The Gold Rush mentality has never really died. People come here from every place where things aren’t working to get away, start over, leave old lives behind. And then when they get here, they start to find out how lonely that is. He folded his arms, leaning back further. Or they fail… and then they go looking for friends. After a while, somebody tells them about this great place they’ve found, this temple or churchlet or secret club, where people tell you how to act, what to do to have everything come out right. The lost and failed and frightened are glad to find a place like that. Soon enough they start thinking that person who runs that place is something special. Maybe not even quite human…

  The Silent Man smiled. It was a surprisingly grim look. And then the person in whom the poor patsies have placed all this trust starts pulling the strings. He or she starts getting them to do things they’d never otherwise have done. Hand over everything they own, their houses and the contents of their bank accounts. Desert their husband or wife and marry somebody they’re told to. Give up their children to be raised by someone else, according to someone’s ‘holy word’. And then, while they’re not looking, the compassionate and enlightened leader of the Ultimate Tabernacle of Divine Confusion runs off to Rio with a carpetbag full of his poor dumb disciples’ money.

  “Maybe,” Urruah said, “such people — the victims, anyway — are just looking for meaning in their lives.” He flicked a glance at Rhiow, not having to say aloud what she knew he was thinking; that it was hard on a species not have any clear sense of whether or not the One existed. To be sure, there were People who didn’t believe in Queen Iau, but not many; a far more common reaction for holders of the feline worldview was simply to have no time for Her. Independence ran deep in the feline psyche, sometimes enough so that a given Person might feel her or his essential felinity was best expressed by denying the authority of Deity — if necessary, to Her face. There were numerous stories among People of the Queen dealing kindly, even humorously, with such free thinkers…knowing them to be intent on being true to themselves and their nature. But such defiance was not an option that would’ve been open to Rhiow; it would have been an essential denial of a command structure that she had long accepted.

  In a world full of death and pain, the Silent Man said, a world full of lies and corruption and theft and cruelty, where good people get cheated and bad people prosper, can you blame them?

  “Hardly,” Hwaith said. “Nonetheless, despite how well they might mean, such innocents can still do great harm if they’re led into it. Or misled.”

  “Which brings us to your Lady in Black,” Rhiow said. “Your friend had seen her often before. But no one tried to follow her before? No one had tried before to find where she’d come from?”

  If they tried, the Silent Man said, my sources didn’t mention it.

  “I think we should find out,” Hwaith said.

  Rhiow lashed her tail. “I concur. The things she spoke of – “ She flicked an ear at Urruah. “There are some troubling implications.”

  What, you mean besides the destruction of the ‘sheaf of sheaves of worlds?’

  Urruah laughed under his breath at the ehhif’s dessicated humor. “You wrote that your companion said she’d been seen three months running – “

  That’s right. Always a couple weeks after the full moon.

  “In other words,” Hwaith said, “when the moon’s dark.” She gave Rhiow a thoughtful sidewise look.

  Rhiow’s tail lashed. Moondark was not an unequivocally dangerous time; but when the Tom’s Eye was most tightly shut, there was a tendency for the darker influences to scurry about and make themselves noticed, like rats scratching and running inside the walls of the world. And for straightforwardly natural reasons, the new moon’s one of the nodes of the month that favor earthquakes…

  “You
said that she was yowling,” Urruah said.

  The Silent Man nodded. Godawful noise, he said. Kind of like a cat. No offense.

  “None taken,” Rhiow said. “And then no sooner had she delivered her message than she went around the corner and simply vanished.”

  That’s the way it looked.

  Rhiow flicked an ear backward, then forward, considering. “There’s a place we need to visit as well, then,” she said. “We may be able to throw some light on where she came from, or where she went.”

  She sat up. “Perhaps we might make your home our base for a short time while we conduct our investigations?” Rhiow said. “Sheba’s told us the ground rules: we won’t seem different to your neighbors from any of the other People who visit you here. And we won’t overtax your hospitality.” Will we, ‘Ruah?

  Urruah half-closed his eyes and let his glance wander sidewise. Officially this was “strategic aversion”, a gesture of agreement or conciliation to a more senior or dominant Person in a pride. But Rhiow noted in combined amusement and annoyance that the direction in which Urruah’s eyes slid included the food dishes out on the terrace…which turned the gesture into more what an ehhif would have thought of as an eyeroll.

  The Silent Man naturally noticed nothing of this. You kidding? he said. I’d prefer you stayed. That way I can test whether you’re still so voluble when I’m off the pills. Hang around just as long as you like.

  “One thing, though,” Hwaith said. “The writing you just did – Cousin, would it be intruding to ask what your interest in the story is?”

  You mean, besides seeing it happen in front of me? The Silent Man stretched, leaned back in the chair again and folded his arms. This town is all about surfaces, he said. And light. The light of day, and what shows when the flashbulbs pop. When something pokes through a surface – or else only puts in an appearance at night, when the light’s poor, and the things come out that can’t stand daylight or publicity – then that attracts my attention. It’s been that way for me for a long time now, and maybe it’s a bad habit. But it’s a hard one to break, this late in the day.