The Big Meow - Diana Dueyn

“…We’ll come,” Rhiow said at last. “We have to make some preparations of our own, you’ll understand. But we’ll be with you shortly.”

“Thank you!” Hwaith said. “Well met on the Journey–”

And he was gone.

The brief inrush of air to the place where he’d been caused a gust of wind in the peppertree’s branches. From above them all, the grackles screeched again, more loudly now, reading the breeze– unusually rationally, for birds so far down the food chain — as something that was somehow the cats’ fault. Everyone rolled their eyes.

Everyone but Urruah, at least. He was looking at Rhiow with an expression that normally meant (when he was going to agree with her) that he was going to find a way to improve on what she’d already decided, or (when he wasn’t in agreement) that he was trying to find a better plan without being overtly offensive.

“Is anyone really buying this?” he said.

Oh, well, Rhiow thought, tucking herself down on the branch in a neutral pose that kept the paws folded in, so as not to show what might be in their claws, so much for not being offensive! Did he have enough breakfast, I wonder? He always starts growling when his stomach does…

“You can buy what you like,” Arhu said, “but if the Whisperer’s selling, I’m in.”

“What he said,” said Siffha’h, hunching herself down beside her brother.

Rhiow closed her eyes, hearing the challenge: “I’ll see your offensiveness, and raise you ten claws and a jawful.” So much for Urruah’s seniority! But the two kits were young and still in the first flush of their power, and when they closed ranks and started reinforcing each other’s sometimes wildly uninformed but emphatic opinions, there was often trouble.

Jath’s ears were already flat at such disrespect to a more senior wizard, and he had an eye on Rhiow, waiting to see what she was going to do. Rhiow removed her sidelong glance from him very slowly, as if not officially noticing his expression — the way you “took back” a move in hauissh. The look she turned on Arhu and Siffha’h was a dam’s look, patient for the moment, but meant to communicate that the big hard clout behind the ear was waiting. “You two want to relocate your manners,” she said, “before I slice some holes in your hides and install new sets.” Not waiting for any reaction, she then glanced over at Urruah. “Meanwhile, perhaps you want to take the time to explain your concerns to these two experts. Though if you’d rather just knock them out of the tree, I’m sure I’ll understand.”

Arhu and Siffha’h had the grace to look a little chastened. Strangely, though, so did Urruah. “I don’t know,” Urruah said. “It just all sounded a little dubious to me, somehow. And sketchy.”

“A hunch? Well, we don’t always have a lot of data under our paws when we start an intervention,” Rhiow said. “Granted, that can make decisions harder. But I don’t doubt Hwaith’s sincerity. And he dropped into the Speech for the part of the conversation that mattered…so there’s no question of this being any kind of fabrication on his part.”

“Misapprehension, though,” Urruah said, “is always a possibility–”

And then something very, very large kicked the tree, and the world heaved upwards and then sank away again…

The grackles burst up out of the tree and into the milky blue, screeching. Below, from the ehhif in the plaza, there were some muffled exclamations at the shake, and some not at all muffled. Over on the main road they’d crossed, tires screeched and some horns blew. In the parking lot on the northern side of Olvera Street, behind the oldest part of the pueblo, car alarms started to go off in a sporadically augmented cacophony of hoots, honks, and warbles. Rhiow closed her eyes and hung onto her branch of the tree, as the vibrations from the kick started to fade away. Then there was another one.

What vhai’d kind of bark do these things have! Rhiow thought in fury as the shaking went on, and on… She dug in her claws as hard as she could, but the bark was too smooth, she was starting to slip–

The shaking gradually faded away. Arhu and Siffha’h and Urruah and Aufwi and Jath were all still hanging on and looking around them as if waiting for one more punchline to the cosmic joke: but nothing came.

“Five point one or so,” said Aufwi, as Rhiow pushed herself upright from the branch, more by force of will than anything else. What she really wanted to do was get down out of this tree and put herself flat against the ground, where there would be no further she could fall. Except it wouldn’t help! The ground could still start bouncing around —

Urruah looked up through the branches at the cloudless sky. “All right, all right, I get it!” he shouted at the Silent One. “Have you ever heard of subtlety??”

Aufwi cocked his head to one side. “Different epicenter on that one,” he said after a moment.

“Oh?” Urruah said. “Where was it?”

How can you possibly sound so casual after something like that? Rhiow said silently to him, once again forcing herself to sit still and keep from indulging in a fit of composure-grooming.

When I’m covering for you, Urruah said. So for Iau’s good sake just shut up and put yourself right!

“Rancho Sierra Vista,” said Aufwi. “It’s thirty miles or so up the coast, at the top of one of the big coastal canyons– five miles or so inland from Malibu. The first one’s epicenter was up in the Hollywood hills–”

“Near Beachwood Canyon, by any chance?” Arhu said.

Aufwi looked thoughtful. “Now than you mention it, about halfway up–”

“Uh huh,” Urruah said. He looked over at Rhiow. “This last one was worse, though. We’d better have a look at Sierra Vista first. Then when we go back, we can compare this quake to one or more of Hwaith’s, and see if they’re somehow similar. And if it is–”

Don’t say if! said a desperate voice in her mind.

Rhiow stood up and made a great show of stretching, fore and aft, as she thought. “Then the case is proven, at least enough for a start. All right,” she said. She looked over at Jath. “Cousin, we’re going to be busy a while, it seems. You’re going to have to mind the gates at Grand Central while we’re sorting this out. Are you willing?”

The question was more ceremonial than anything else. “I accept with good cheer,” Jath said.

I bet you do, especially since you’ve been wanting to get your paws on my gates for– how long now? Since Ffairh went out-of-skin, anyway. It was one of those minor irritations that had been nibbling at the end of Rhiow’s tail for a long time. Jath had always seen himself as heir-apparent to the master supervisory position for the New York gating facilities…especially since it brought with it supervision of all the other North American gates. He’d taken it badly when, on Ffairh’s nomination of her, Rhiow had succeeded to the position: but there had been nothing he could say or do, as the Powers that Be had “confirmed in silence” by raising no objection, and Harl’h, as the involved Supervisory wizard, had done the same. Rhiow had found dealing with the situation difficult, early in her career. But over time her ears had become more resistant to the claws Jath had tried to hook into them, and finally he’d given up bothering her and gone back to watching his own mousehole.

“I thank you,” Rhiow said, “and the Powers lay Their tails over your back as They walk this path with you.” Because They’ll need to!– for the Grand Central gates were not only more central and more senior than the Penn group, but famously cranky and difficult to manage. But then again, Rhiow thought, putting her whiskers forward somewhat belatedly, and possibly for the wrong reasons, maybe this small adventure will give you a sense of why I’m running Grand Central, and you’re not.

That was an unworthy thought, though. Rhiow turned away from it…but with just a few whiskers still forward. “Aufwi,” she said, “you know the here-and-now Los Angeles gate better than any of us: we’ll need you to act as anchor for us here, and consultant, so that we can talk to you when we’ve looked at Hwaith’s gate and have a realtime baseline to judge it by.”

“No problem with that,” Aufwi said, glancing down at where the dislocated gate still hung, gently stirring, from its branch. “When I get it back in place, I’ll run another diagnostic before I take it offline, and compare the recent logs against the ones from Hwaith’s time. That way we can see if the gate’s showing any signs of acting the way it was back then.”

“Just what’s needed,” Rhiow said. “Thanks, cousin. Do you know the area where this last quake was?”

Aufwi got that stricken look again. “No,” he said, “not really–”

Rhiow laughed as she got up, even though she staggered a bit– it was as if her legs had become suddenly unwilling to trust the solidity of the branch underneath her. “Calm down,” she said, “it’s not as if we expect you to know everything — !”

Arhu had sat up too, and still had his head tilted a little to one side. “I can see it,” he said. “There’s a gateway, and a hill. And I hear water coming down nearby…”

Rhiow put her ears forward, pleased that he’d so quickly found where they needed to be. Though he’d possessed the Eye, the visionary gift, from his first hours as a wizard, controlling it was another story. “We’ll do a short-jump transit, then,” Rhiow said, “and see what’s going on up there.” She glanced down and around to make sure there were no ehhif nearby, but they were mostly in other parts of the plaza– for all she knew, they’d been concerned that the tree might fall on them during the earthquake. “Probably that parking lot behind these buildings will be a good place,” Rhiow said: “it won’t be too full yet. Siffha’h, will you go lay out a transit circle for us? Arhu will pass you the coordinates.”

“Right,” Siffha’h said, and vanished with a small inrush of air. A second later, Arhu did the same.

Aufwi jumped down to the next branch, over which the gate was hanging, and sank his claws into the weft of it. “Call me when you need me,” he said to Rhiow; then he pulled the gate up from the branch and dove through it, taking it with him as he vanished.

Jath got up and stretched, a long casual gesture meant to suggest that earthquakes were nothing in particular to him. I saw your eyes, though, Rhiow thought. Why are you bothering with this petty point-scoring…? Or am I overly sensitive at the moment because the Earth just tried to kick me off like a flea?

“You’ve got your claws full with those two,” Jath said.

Under any other circumstances Rhiow would have immediately agreed: but with her nerves in their present state, she was unwilling to give Jath the satisfaction. “They’re both extremely talented,” Rhiow said, “and living proof of the old saying that sometimes the Powers mean the trainers to be the trained as well.” She put her whiskers way forward. “Meanwhile, the Track Thirty-Two gate at Grand Central will be running its pre-peak diagnostic shortly. I wouldn’t like to make you miss that…”

Jath’s expression went concerned…and acquisitive. “No,” he said, “of course not — Hunt’s luck to you, Rhiow, Urruah–”

He too vanished. Urruah gave Rhiow a look. “You sent him off to watch an automated log dump?” Urruah said. “Half an hour of figures as dry as a roadkill squirrel? You’re cruel.”

“Powers forbid I should deny him any of the joys of managing Grand Central,” Rhiow said, as they walked down the air together, glancing around at the plaza, where the upset ehhif were slowly regaining their composure. “If he’s going to covet something of mine, let it be an informed covet.”

At ground level they glanced around, then made their way toward the archway that led back to the parking lot. “Sounding a little possessive today…” Urruah said.

Rhiow hissed under her breath as they made their way under the arch, past a group of ehhif in broad hats, tuning up stringed instruments. “Aaah. ‘Ruah, it’s just that he’s so obvious about it sometimes… and so willful about ignoring the facts: as if Ffairh and I were in some kind of cosmic plot with the Powers that Be to deny him his Iau-given rights. As if any of us would have time for such a thing, let alone inclination–”

They strolled over to where Arhu was sitting by the glowing lines of a completed transit circle, all neatly done inside a single parking space well off to one side of the parking lot. Siffha’h was sitting in the middle of the circle and glowing slightly around the edges herself, an indicator that she had the wizardry powered up and ready to go, with herself as power source. As Rhiow and Urruah paced up to the circle, Siffha’h said, “Did you see the way he was staring at you?”

Rhiow glanced over at her. “’He?’” she said. “You little eavesdropper, haven’t I told you before this to stay out of my head?” She took a not-very-serious swipe at Siffha’h’s head. “Powerful you may be, but be responsible about it: leave your teammates their privacy. And ‘he’ who? Jath? As if I care.”

“Jath!” Siffha’h let out a hiss of derision. “That dried-up old hairball? I meant Hwaith.”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t notice it,” Arhu said, as Rhiow stepped into the circle and sat down on the small sub-circle marked out for her. “He just sat there twitching and staring, like he couldn’t take his eyes off you.”

Rhiow jerked her tail in dismissal, then wrapped it around her feet where she sat. “Oh please! I’ve spent half the day, already, feeling as if everyone’s staring at me. I’m starting to think I put my ears on backwards when I got up. And as for Hwaith, he was watching me because I was the one who’d be making the decision. Yes, he was twitchy, but why wouldn’t he be? Nobody dares stay out of their proper time for very long: things get damaged.”

“And usually,” Urruah said, walking around the circle and checking the structure of the spell, “the first damage is to you. That’d be enough by itself to put his fur up. But also–” He looked at Arhu. “Think about it. Who likes going years out of his way to admit something’s going on that he can’t handle, and then having to ask for help?” Hearing the gender-specific pronouns, Rhiow glanced down at the bark as if wondering where her clawmarks should have been, and very much avoided putting her whiskers forward in amusement. “I get the sense he doesn’t like time travel much, either.”

“None too fond of it myself,” Siffha’h muttered.

“Well, you’d best get that way,” Rhiow said, “since the Whisperer seems to feel it’s what we need to be doing right now.” She sighed, then, for as she looked down at the spell-symbols surrounding her personalized part of the transit circle, she realized she was going to need to brush up on the conditional tenses and plug-in syntaxes that the Speech used to deal with travel back and forth through time. Arhu had all the pertinent symbology laid out here, probably having saved it from their last paratemporal work, but it didn’t do to rely too completely on someone else’s transcription of your personality data. They might transpose a character, somewhere along the line, and inadvertently change your nature. Not the best way to start a job…