The Big Meow Page 23

  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.

  Prêt-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 in danger 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 façade, 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 t
hought; 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 be taught, 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 t
hink 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.”