To Visit the Queen

by Diane Duane

  * * *

  To Visit the Queen

  Diane Duane

  * * *

  Warner Aspect

  OTHER BOOKS BY DIANE DUANE

  The Book of Night with Moon available from Warner Aspect

  The "Middle Kingdoms" Quartet:

  The Door into Fire

  The Door into Shadow

  The Door into Sunset

  The Door into Starlight*

  The "Young Wizards" Series:

  So You Want to Be a Wizard

  Deep Wizardry

  High Wizardry

  A Wizard Abroad

  Novels Set in the Star Trek™ Universe:

  The Wounded Sky

  My Enemy, My Ally

  The Romulan Way

  Spock's World

  Doctor's Orders

  Dark Mirror

  Intellivore

  Novels Set in the Marvel Comics™ Universe:

  Spider-Man: The Venom Factor

  Spider-Man: The Lizard Sanction

  Spider-Man: The Octopus Agenda

  X-Men: Empire's End*

  *FORTHCOMING

  TO VISIT THE QUEEN. Copyright © 1999 by Diane Duane. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Aspect[®] name and logo are registered trademarks of Warner Books, Inc.

  For information address Warner Books, 1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  A Time Warner Company

  ISBN 0-7595-4143-4

  A trade paperback edition of this book was published in 1999 by Warner Books.

  First eBook edition: February 2001

  Visit our Web site at www.iPublish.com

  For Mike Hodel

  Acknowledgments

  MANY THANKS TO:

  Chris Pond, in the Public Information Office at the Palace of Westminster; the Public Information Office, Number Ten Downing Street; the Yeoman Ravenmaster, Her Majesty's Tower of London.

  A Note on Feline Linguistics

  Ailurin is not a spoken language, or not simply spoken. Like all the human languages, it has a physical component, the cat version of "body language," and a surprising amount of information is passed through the physical component before a need for vocalized words arises.

  Even people who haven't studied cats closely will recognize certain "words" in Ailurin: the rub against a friendly leg, the arched back and fluffed fur of a frightened cat, the crouch and stare of the hunter. All of these have strictly physical antecedents and uses, but they are also used by cats for straightforward communication of mood or intent. Many subtler signs can be seen by even a human student: the sideways flirt of the tail that says "I don't care" or "I wonder if I can get away with this..." the elaborate yawn in another cat's face, the stiff-legged, arch-backed bounce, which is the cat equivalent of making a face and jumping out at someone, shouting "Boo!" But where gestures run out, words are used— more involved than the growl of threat or purr of contentment, which are all most humans hear of intercat communication.

  "Meowing" is not counted here, since cats rarely seem to meow at each other. That type of vocalization is usually a "pidgin" language used for getting humans' attention: the cat equivalent of "Just talk to them clearly and loudly and they'll get what you mean sooner or later." Between each other, cats subvocalize using the same mechanism that operates what some authorities call "the purr box," a physiological mechanism that is not well understood but seems to have something to do with the combined vibration of air in the feline larynx and blood in the veins and arteries of the throat. To someone with a powerful microphone, a cat speaking Ailurin seems to be making very soft meowing and purring sounds ranging up and down several octaves, all at a volume normally inaudible to humans.

  This vocalized part of Ailurin is a "pitched" language, like Mandarin Chinese, more sung than spoken. It is mostly vowel-based— no surprise in a species that cannot pronounce most human-style consonants. Very few noncats have ever mastered it: not only does any human trying to speak it sound to a cat as if he were shouting every word, but the delicate intonations are filled with traps for the unwary or unpracticed. Auo hwaai hhioehhu uaeiiiaou, for example, may look straightforward: "I would like a drink of milk" is the Cat-Human Phrasebook definition. But the people writing the phrasebook for the human ear are laboring under a terrible handicap, trying to transliterate from a thirty-seven-vowel system to an alphabet with only five. A human misplacing or mispronouncing only one of the vowels in this phrase will find cats smiling gently at him and asking him why he wants to feed the litter-box to the taxicab?... this being only one of numerous nonsenses that can be made of the above example.

  So communication from our side of things tends to fall back on body language (stroking, or throwing things, both of which cats understand perfectly well) and a certain amount of monologue— which human-partnered cats, with some resignation, accept as part of the deal. For their communications with most human beings, the cats, like so many of us, tend to fall back on shouting. For this book's purposes, though, all cat-to-human speech, whether physical or vocal, is rendered as normal dialogue: that's the way it seems to the cats, after all.*

  One other note: two human-language terms, "queen" and "tom," are routinely used to translate the Ailurin words sh'heih and sth'heih. "Female" and "male" don't properly translate these words, being much too sexually neutral— which cats, in their dealings with one another, emphatically are not. The Ailurin word ffeih is used for both neutered males and spayed females. — DD

  Note

  *Cat thoughts and silent communications are rendered in italics.

  Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, where have you been?

  I've been to London to visit the Queen.

  Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, what did you there?

  I frightened a little mouse under her chair.

  CHILDREN'S RHYME

  In Life's name, and for Life's sake, I assert that I will employ the Art which is Its gift in Life's service alone. I will guard growth and ease pain. I will fight to preserve what grows and lives well in its own way: nor will I change any creature unless its growth and life, or that of the system of which it is part, are threatened. To these ends, in the practice of my Art, I will ever put aside fear for courage, and death for life, when it is fitting to do so— looking always toward the Heart of Time, where all our sundered times are one, and all our myriad worlds lie whole, in That from Which they proceeded....

  THE WIZARD'S OATH,

  SPECIES-NONSPECIFIC RECENSION

  Prologue

  Patel went slowly up the gray concrete stairs to the elevated Docklands Light Railway station at Island Gardens; he took them one at a time, rather than two or three at once as he usually did. Nothing was wrong with him: it was morning, he felt energetic enough— a good breakfast inside him, everything okay at home, the weather steady enough, cool and gray but not raining. However, the package he was carrying was heavy enough to pull a prizefighter's arms out of their sockets.

  He had made the mistake of putting the book in a plastic shopping bag. Now the thing's sharp corners were punching through the bag, and the bag's handles, such as they were, were stretching thinner and thinner under the book's weight, cutting into his hands like cheesewire and leaving red marks. He had to stop and transfer the bag from right hand to left, left hand to right, as he went up the stairs, hauling himself along by the chipped blue-painted handrail. When he finally reached the platform, Patel set the bag down gratefully on the concrete, with a grunt, and rubbed his hands, looking up at the red LEDs of the train status sign to see
when the next one would be along. 1, the sign read, BANK, 2 MINUTES.

  He leaned against the wall of the glass-sided station-platform shelter, out of reach of the light, chill east wind, and thought about the morning's class schedule. This was his second year of a putative three years at London Guildhall University, up in the City. He was well on his way toward a degree in mathematics with business applications, though what good that was really going to do him, at the end of the day, he wasn't certain. There would be time to start worrying about job hunting, though, next year. Right now Patel was doing well enough, his student grant was safe, and whatever attention he wasn't spending on his studies was mostly directed toward making sure he had enough money to get by. Though he didn't have to worry about rent as yet, courtesy of his folks, there were other serious matters at hand: clothes, textbooks, partying.

  From down the track came a demure hum and a thrum of rails as the little three-car red-and-blue Docklands train slid toward the station. Patel picked up the book in his arms— he had had enough of the bag's bloody handles— satisfied that at least this would be the last time he would have to carry the huge god-awful thing anywhere. One of the jewelry students, of all people, had seen the for-sale ad on Patel's Web page and had decided that the metallurgical information in the book would make it more than worth the twenty quid Patel was asking for it. For his own part, Patel was glad enough to let it go. He had bought the book originally for its mathematical and statistical content, and found to his annoyance within about a month of starting his second semester that it was more technical than he needed for the courses he was taking, which by and large did not involve metallurgy or engineering. He had put the book aside, and after that, most of the use it had seen involved Patel's mother using it to press flowers.

  The train pulled up in front of him, stopped, and chimed: the doors opened, and people emptied out in a rush of briefcases and schoolbags going by, and here and there a few white uniforms showing from under jackets and coats— people heading to the hospital in town. Patel got on the last car, which would be the first one out, and sat in what would have been the driver's seat, if there had been a driver; there was none. These trains were handled by a trio of straightforwardly programmed PCs based somewhere in the Canary Wharf complex. The innovation left the first seats in the front car open, and gave the lucky passenger a beautiful view of the ride in to town.

  Patel, though, had seen it all a hundred times, and paid little attention until the train swung round the big curve near South Quay and headed across the water. Even though he knew a little about the place's history, Patel found it hard to imagine this landscape not full of construction gear and scaffolding, but jostling with the hulls of close-berthed ships, the air black with smoke from a thousand smokestacks, cranes loading and unloading goods: the shipping of an empire filling these man-made harbors and lagoons that had been dredged out of oxbows of the Thames. It had all vanished a long time ago, when Britain stopped being an empire and the mistress of the seas. This whole area had undergone a terrible decline after the war, during which it had been bombed nearly flat, and whatever was left had fallen into decrepitude or ruin. Now it was growing again, office space abruptly mushrooming on the waterside sites where the ships had docked to disgorge their cargoes. Only the street names, and the names of the Docklands stations, preserved the nautical memories. Some of the old loading cranes still stood, but the warehouses behind them had been converted to expensive loft apartments. Slim black cormorants fished off Heron Quays, though the quays themselves were gone, slowly being replaced by more apartments and office space, and shining hotels and still more office buildings looked down on waters that were no longer so polluted they would catch fire if you dropped a match in them.

  Patel got out at Shadwell to change for the little spur line to Tower Gateway, and stood there waiting for a few minutes. All around were four- or five-story brick buildings, their brick all leached and streaked with many years' weather, tired looking. Scattered among them was much council housing, ten-story blocks of flats done in pebble-dash and painted concrete, looking just as weary. These were not slums anymore, not quite, though his father never tired of telling Patel and his mother how lucky they were to be able to afford someplace better. It was true enough, though it meant Patel had a three-quarter-hour commute to school every morning instead of a fifteen-minute walk.

  No matter. Today he was grateful enough not to have to walk more than a few minutes carrying the Book from Hell. The train for Tower Gateway came rumbling along, stopped, and opened its doors. It was crowded, and Patel slipped in through the door and put the book down on the floor, bracing it between his shins lest it fall on someone's foot and get him involved in what would probably be a completely justified lawsuit for grievous bodily harm.

  The train swung south the few blocks to Tower Gateway. There Patel got out with his burden, walked along the platform, and took the escalator up through the tubelike corridor that led to the overpass that avoided the main-line BR tracks: then down the other side again, and out across the open concrete plaza from which jutted several large slabs of ancient wall, not much more than fieldstones mortared together— a remnant of the old days when the City of London was all the London there was and that tiny square mileage had a proper defensive wall of its own. Nothing to do, of course, with the other walled edifice just this side of the river...

  As he went down the stairs to the underpass-tunnel that dove under the traffic stream of Minories Street, Patel glanced up and caught a glimpse of crenellated tower against the clouds: one of the metal windvane-banners mounted on a pinnacle of the Tower's outer wall stood frozen in midswing against the wind, then spun suddenly to point west in a gust off the Thames. Sky's getting nasty, Patel thought. Might rain. Hope it stops by the time I'm aboveground again.

  He headed through the underpass, breathing a little harder now from the weight he was carrying—Am I getting out of shape? I can't wait to get rid of this thing — and up the stairs on the far side; past some more "islands" of old preserved City wall, and then down again into the Tower Hill Underground station.

  He pushed his train ticket into the turnstile before him, waited for the machine to spit it out again. Here he would catch the last leg of his trip, the tube train to Monument, and meet Sasha at the coffee shop at Eastcheap and Gracechurch Street, and she would take this thing off his hands. And arms, and shoulders, but particularly the hands, Patel thought, and headed down the stairs, stepping a little to one side so as not to be trampled by the people behind him. A direction sign just ahead of him read PLATFORMS 2 AND 3, DISTRICT AND CIRCLE LINES, WEST.

  He headed for the sign, changing the bag again from left hand to right hand with a slight grimace as he went, and turned the corner left toward the tube platform— Dark. Why was it dark all of a sudden? Power failure, Patel thought. Though where's the light behind me? He turned— The smell was what hit him first. My God, what is that? Did the sewer break through in here or something? But there was no way to tell. He couldn't see. Patel turned again, took a few hesitant steps forward. There was something wrong with the ground. It felt mushy—— and then suddenly light broke through again, the watery gray light of the morning he had just left. A few spits and spatters of rain reached him even here in the tunnel, blown in on that chilly wind. Some part of Patel's mind had now begun to go around and around with thoughts like How the heck is there daylight down here— I must be fifty feet underground and The smell, what is that smell? but that part of him felt strangely far away, like a mind belonging to someone else, in the face of what he saw before him. A street, and the gray day above it, those made sense: buildings pressing close on either side, yes, and the enameled metal sign set high in the brick wall of the building opposite him, reading COOPER'S ROW— that was fine too: the math/business building of the university was up past the end of the Row, in Jewry Street, and he would have been heading there after meeting Sasha. But there was no pavement to be seen. There was hardly any road visible either: It w
as covered ankle-deep in thick brown mud, the source of the god-awful smell. Must have been a sewer break, said some hopeful part of his mind, steadfastly ignoring the basic issue of how he was suddenly standing at ground level.

  Patel walked forward slowly, trying not to sink into the mud, and failing— it came up over the tops of his shoes. Boy, these trainers are going to be a loss after this, and they were only three weeks old. How am I going to explain this to Mum? Squelch, squelch, he walked forward, and came to the corner of Cooper's Row and Tower Hill, looked down to his right in the direction of the Monument tube station.

  It was not there. The road was lined with old buildings, three- or four-story brick edifices all crowded together where multistory office buildings should have been. The traffic was gone too. Or rather, it was all replaced by carriages, carriages pulled by horses, their hooves making a strangled wet clopping noise as they pounded through the mud, up and down Byward Street and Tower Hill. Patel staggered, changed the bag mechanically from the right hand to the left, and took a few more steps forward, looking away from the traffic—Don't want to see that; doesn't make sense— and across to the Tower.

  It, at least, was still there: The great square outer walls defining the contours of Tower Hill stood up unchanged, the lesser corner towers reached upward as always, the windvanes on them wheeling and whirling in the gusts of wind off the river— the wind that bore the stink forcefully into Patel's nostrils and the rain, now falling a little harder, into his face, cold and insistent. That wind got into his hair and tried to find its way under his jacket collar; and around him, the few trees sprouting from the unseen pavement rocked in the wind, their bare branches rubbing and ratcheting together. Bare. That was wrong. It was September. And other things were moving, rocking, too— Momentarily distracted by the motion, he looked past the Tower, down toward Lower Thames Street and the great bend of the river that began there. A forest, he thought at first, and then rejected the thought as idiotic. No trees would be so straight and bare, with no branches but one or two sets each, wide cross-pieces set well up the trunk; nor would trees be crowded so close together, or rock together so unnervingly, practically from the root. The "trees" were masts— masts of ships, fifty or seventy or a hundred of them all anchored there together, the wind and the water pushing at the ships from which the masts grew; and the bare shapes silhouetted against the morning gray were all rocking, rocking slightly out of phase, making faint, uneasy groaning noises that he could hear even at this distance, for they were perhaps a quarter of a mile down the river from where he stood. From that direction too came a mutter of human voices, people shouting, going about their business, the sound muted by the wind that rose around him and rocked the groaning masts together.