The Big Meow - Diana Dueyn

They walked away. “What an incredible mess,” Rhiow said. “The patching’s going to be a nightmare.”

Urruah shrugged his tail. “It could have been worse,” he said. “Try patching a whole planet, or a whole region of space. But the Planetary’s on it, and he won’t dawdle: not with as many casualties as there were. Bad enough that they happened, and people suffered them. But after the master patch team’s done, things here will be back to normal instantly… as far as any ehhif here can tell. They’ll just reset the whole LA basin to sunset local time.”

“’Just!””

Urruah chuckled. “I’m not minimizing the work involved,” he said. “But it beats the alternative…”

“No argument,” Rhiow said.

Aufwi finished the circle, and everyone crowded into it, even Ith, who curled his tail carefully into it with a sigh, and Arhu promptly walked up it and sat on his head again. A second later they were in the Silent Man’s back yard, and he came out the French doors and looked at them, shaking his head.

I did not think I was going to see you people again, he said. When the hillside started falling down, I pretty much thought that was it. Yet it didn’t fall down, quite. Or on any of the other houses around here.

“Oh well,” Arhu said, clambering down off Ith again and heading for the house with his tail up, “we didn’t want to mess things up too much.” He paused by the Silent Man and gave him a sassy look. “But you should have some better cracks in your front walk now.”

To Rhiow’s astonishment, and also to Arhu’s, the Silent Man picked Arhu up and dangled him in front of him like a doll, grinning from ear to ear. And I thought I was a cat person before, he said. I want to hear about everything that happened. But first you should all come in and have something to eat.

There was no arguing with that. They did.

The storytelling went on late into the night, despite how wrecked the wizardly exertions should normally have left them all. “I have a feeling,” Helen said, stretched out luxuriously again on the white couch with Sheba on her lap, “that the Queen has been busy awarding dispensations of energy to the deserving…”

The Silent Man had been taking notes nonstop for at least three hours when they ran out of details for him, or at least details that would make sense. He looked at the pile of flip-notebook pages full of shorthand and shook his head, and stretched, being careful to avoid Ith’s head where it lay sticking into the living room through the open French doors. I have no idea what to make of most of this.

“I’m not sure we do either,” Urruah said. “It’s going to take a year’s worth of digesting.”

But will I be able to do that? the Silent Man said. If your ‘patching wizards’ are going to put everything back the way it was before the big quake started… will I remember?

“Everything that happened up to then, surely,” Arhu said. “But you might want to leave town before the reset… and take your notes with you. Otherwise you won’t know how it came out.”

“I’ll let you know when it’s about to happen,” Hwaith said.

The Silent Man looked surprised. What – you’re not going back to the future with Blackie?

Rhiow looked away. “No,” Hwaith said. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way.” He was sitting up with his tail curled around his toes: now he became very interested in the end of the tail. “Sometimes we just have to do our job, that’s all.”

The Silent Man said nothing for a while. Then he looked at Rhiow. I need to let you know, he said, that the tinkering you did with my innards has just about worn off. That tells me that it’s about time I left town and headed back east. He glanced around. Sheba and I were just about finished with this town, anyway….

“There’s no harm in letting you know,” Urruah said, “that they won’t be finished with you for a long, long time. And you’ll make a lot of ehhif happy over time.”

The Silent Man bowed to him from where he sat in the wooden chair by the desk. There is no higher praise, he said.

Urruah sighed. “Someone’s going to have to go get the gate set up for the slide tomorrow.”

“That’ll be me,” Hwaith said. He glanced around at the others. “I’d sooner not move it: there are diagnostics to do, and anyway the patching teams wouldn’t thank me – “

“Hwaith, don’t bother,” Aufwi said. “I’ll handle it. You get some rest.” He glanced around at the others. “No point in wishing anyone the luck of the hunt: we’ve had it! I’ll see you all in the morning. Two hours after Eyerise?

“That sounds fine,” Rhiow said.

Aufwi vanished.

And what about you? the Silent Man said to Helen Walks Softly. What about your film career? What about your agent?

“I’ve already called him,” Helen said. “I’ve explained an urgent need to go home to see relatives in the Midwest. Which I do really have.” She smiled. “He made up half the story for himself before I could even finish misdirecting him – he’s used to having starlets break without warning under the strain of public attention.” Helen shrugged, and then smiled a little sadly. “I will miss LA, though. This LA. It’s been… a trip down Memory Lane.”

The Silent Man nodded slowly: then stood up at last. No long goodbyes, he said, and looked around at them all. If I don’t see you in the morning — I’ll see you in the papers.

“Not the funny ones?” Urruah said.

The Silent Man smiled. Never my style, he said.

He went from one to another of the People, petting them goodbye, and finally stopped by Rhiow. Don’t suppose you’d thank me if I picked you up and held you upside down… he said.

She dropped her jaw at him in the human-smile gesture. “Perhaps not,” she said. “Go very well, cousin; see you around the Worlds.” Who knows, it might be true…

He stroked her head, then straightened up to take Helen’s hand. You would’ve been great in the movies… he said. Oh well. Be a good cop.

“That’s the way I roll,” Helen said. “Go well…”

The Silent Man picked up the sleepy Sheba and headed down the bare little hall, and the bedroom door closed behind him.

“I don’t know about you,” Rhiow said, “but I’m ready for my nap.” She glanced idly over the others, but not too closely, all too aware of the sorrow or pity they were keeping from showing in their eyes, and unwilling to see it surface to everyone’s embarrassment. “Hwaith?” she said, turning to him. “A last debrief?”

“Of course,” he said.

And the two of them walked down the hall to the guest bedroom, tails high, as if everything was fine.

They were, after all, People.

Much later, in the guest bedroom, Rhiow was lying on the broad windowsill, looking out into the dark: and Hwaith was beside her, sprawled, snoring gently.

It was all over; over at last. Yet now there was something that wasn’t over. Or over before it’s fairly begun…

Rhiow looked out the window into the street, where in other houses lights were ablaze as people picked up after the quake. To think, she thought, that I sat there telling the story of Aifheh and Sehau so casually. How did I never see that this was coming for me?

Yet now that she did, she felt unable to know how to react, like some Person who’s never seen traffic before and freezes in the middle of the road when she sees the first headlights. I’m caught in something that sounds just like a Middle Lives tale for the Two of them, Rhiow thought. For there were endless variations of the basic story, regional variations, some of them even verging on the comedic – since when the Two began playing sa’Rrahh’s ugly Play back at her, humor was unquestionably part of the strand.

Then why doesn’t this feel funny, Rhiow thought. After tomorrow morning – this morning! – we won’t see each other again. The Powers don’t permit casual commuting between the past and the future: there’s too much chance of one contaminating the other. So forget about that.

And as for other possible remedies… Rhiow’s tail lashed. Our times are too far apart. Even if Hwaith wanted to stay for me, tried to stay for me, as Sehau did for Aifheh… The distance in moons is just too far. No one could do it. The winds at the edge of Life would sweep any Person-to-be over the border into Itself eventually. And even if he had more lives to spend, and every one of them should last as long as it possibly could before the body breaks down at last… he still couldn’t do it. The time between us is just too wide.

And why would he want to do it? He met me three days ago, as his time goes! He can’t possibly know what he wants in so short a time.

Though he says he does…

Impossible as that seemed, perhaps he did. If so, it just made the story worse, especially as she was herself trapped right in the middle of the tragedy of it, and was understanding its issues better than she ever had. So very unconcerned she’d been about the tale in past years: one more legend, one more part of an educated Person’s knowledge – and nothing to do with her, since she was long ago safely spayed. But now the reality had her by the scruff indeed, and though she might kick and yowl as she liked, there was no escaping it.

And possibly the worst aspect of the whole situation was that even with this sudden unseasonable longing rearing up inside her, there was nothing Rhiow could do about it. No kittens for you, she thought. Not even wizardry could grow back a womb for them to kindle in now: your body’s become too used to the way things have been for all these years. It would quickly reject any attempt to clone new material from neighboring tissue. And the ovaries were gone too: so no chance ever again to experience the ecstasies of heat, the mad hormone-driven flirtations, the chase and the always-intended capture, the hot flush of satisfaction after fulfillment. And to think how I teased Siffha’h about this. Well, that’s come back to bite me hard now.

Rhiow squeezed her eyes shut and crouched there in the dark for a long time.

Dear Queen about us, what do I do?!

No answer. But that was the problem with serving a deity who was also a Person. Independence, the right to make one’s own choice no matter how far down the scale of power you were, was always a given. In the legend, everything had rested on sa’Rraah’s freedom to come and go, and Her casual choice an aeon ago to wander back to the much-missed Hearth and taunt Queen Iau one more time. Without that freedom, there would be no tenth life, no chance for immortality.

And we have no way to be sure of that chance, Rhiow thought, miserable in the darkness, shivering with anguish. There’s no way to tell if it that last Life will ever be offered, or even achieved, no matter how hard you strive for it. Like wizardry itself, it comes or it doesn’t… and that’s just the way things are.

Rhiow lay there, feeling the claw in her heart, and knew whose it was. Even after everything that’s happened, she said to sa’Rraah, you’re not off my case, are you?

After what you and I have just been through, said the Lone Power, what would you expect? How should I allow a mortal to put me through such indignity without suffering for it?And anyway… this was all about putting things back to the way they usually are. Now you will have your wish. Make the best of it.

She fell silent.

“Rhiow…”

He stretched, looking at her, the bronzy eyes pale in the reflected glow from the streetlights outside.

“For the Queen’s sake don’t apologize,” she said.

“I wasn’t planning to. I’m done with that. The way things are… is the way things are.”

She bent down and rubbed his face against his: but then she had to stop.

“Will you stay a little while longer?” he said. “Just another day or two – “

“I can’t,” Rhiow said. “You know I can’t. It’s not just the issue of the timeslide, and the buildup of the effects of being out of my right time – though that’s part of it. If I stay longer, it’s just going to be harder for both of us. We should take pity on each other and end it now.”

He sighed. “She does love her little vengeances,” Hwaith said, “doesn’t she.”

“Yes she does,” Rhiow said, and looked away from Hwaith, finding it difficult to bear the pain in his eyes, which he was trying to manage for her sake.

“Well then,” Hwaith said. “It’ll just have to be another life, then.”

“So it seems,” Rhiow said, doing her best to sound cheerful.

“All right,” Hwaith said. “Then let’s cuddle.”

She fell asleep on the windowsill as she had never fallen asleep with another Person: with one of Hwaith’s forelegs thrown over her, protective, something she’d seen Arhu and Sif do. At first she found it hard to bear. Then Rhiow put her own foreleg over his and hugged it to her. This is going to have to last, she said. There’s always memory, at least.

It was cold comfort. But sometimes, after saving the world, that was all you had left.

Dawn came too soon. Two hours later came too soon.

But two hours later they were all standing outside the Observatory as the sun looked over the low mountains to the east, and struck fire from the sundial by the white obelisk. It was still too early for ehhif tourists — not that there were likely to be any here this morning, considering what the night before had been like – and the worldgate lay out on the terrace again, just by itself now and not enclosed in any unnecessary spell-structure.

“I set it up for Grand Central in our time,” Aufwi said: “easier to drop everyone in the same place when there’s a timeslide hooked into the weave. The track 33 off-hours access area, an hour after you left the original uptime coordinates be all right for everybody?”

“Fine,” Rhiow heard Urruah say. It was not fine with her: nothing seemed fine at the moment. She stood off to one side with Hwaith, looking at the gate, even though there was nothing she wanted to look at less – except perhaps Hwaith’s eyes.

He put his head up against hers. You should go, he said silently.

No I shouldn’t! Rhiow cried. …Except I must.

Aufwi glanced at them, no more; then away again. Quietly the air went prickly with the feel of a gate going active when it had a timeslide augmentation.

Hwaith pushed his face in front of hers so that she couldn’t avoid seeing it. Cousin and love, he said, …go well.

Cousin, Rhiow said. And love. Always go well.

With you wishing it so, Hwaith said, it has to be.

And he turned his face away.

Rhiow walked over to the gate more unwillingly than she had ever gone anywhere in her life. Helen, in LAPD uniform again, was stepping through as she came up: Arhu and Ith went through after her, and then Siffha’h. Urruah glanced over his shoulder and went through, followed by Aufwi. By the gate, knowing it would close after her, Rhiow paused as Hwaith came along behind her.

“Don’t forget to disengage the slide conduit before you close it down,” she said.

“Rhiow,” Hwaith said. “Am I a complete idiot? …Just go.”

“Yes,” she said.

She took one last long glance, one that was going to have to last her a lifetime: then turned and stepped through.