by Diane Duane
She glanced at the scaffolding above the group of ehhif. "Saash," Rhiow said. "That bucket."
Saash followed her glance. "I see it. In front of the Dumpster?"
"That's the spot." Rhiow turned her attention to Urruah and the houff.
An almighty crash came from just in front of the second Dumpster. The bucket full of wet cement-sand had come down directly in front of the security guard with the gun. He jumped back, yelling with surprise and fear at being splattered, as the other ehhif did; then spun, looking upward for the source of the trouble. There was no one there, of course. Several of the men, including the second security guard, disappeared into the construction site; the man with the gun stood staring upward.
Rhiow, meantime, waited until the houff was within clear hearing range— she didn't want to have to shout. As it lurched closer to the car where she and Saash sat, Rhiow chose her moment… then said the six syllables of the ahou'ffriw. It was not a word she spoke often, though part of the general knowledge of a feline in her line of work. Sidled as she was, Rhiow could see the word take flight like one of the hunting birds that worked the high city, arrowing at the houff. The word of command struck straight through the creature, as it had been designed to do when the houff themselves were designed; struck all its muscles stiff, froze the thoughts in its brain and the intended movements in its nerves. The houff crashed to the concrete and lay there on its side, its tongue hanging out, its eyes glazed. Urruah went down with it, and after a moment extricated himself and got up, looking confused.
"I don't know about you," Rhiow said softly— and Urruah's head jerked up at the sound— "but we're on callout this morning. You had some different business, maybe? The Powers That Be suggested you take the morning off to beat up defenseless houff?"
Urruah squinted to see her better. "Oh, 'luck, Rhiow."
" 'Luck is what none of us are going to have if you don't pull yourself together," Rhiow said. "Come on. We've got ten blocks to make before twenty-three after."
"Long-jump it," Urruah said, stepping down off the houff.
"No," Rhiow said. "No point in throwing away power like that, when we may have something major to do in a few minutes. Get sidled and come on." She jumped down from the car: Saash followed.
They crossed the street and went on down Lexington again: Urruah first, sidled now, and taking it easy for the moment; then Saash. Rhiow paused just for a moment to look over her shoulder at the houff. He was staggering to his feet again, looking groggy but relieved.
Good, Rhiow thought. She went after the others and caught up with Saash first. "That was slick," she said, "with the bucket."
"It was in a bad position to start with. Pull a string or so, change the bucket's moment of inertia—" Saash shrugged one ear back and forward, casual, but she smiled.
Rhiow did, too, then trotted forward to catch up with Urruah. "Now," she said, more affably, "you tell me what all that was about."
He strolled along for a moment without answering. Rhiow was tempted to clout him, but it would be a waste of energy, and it really was difficult being annoyed for long at so good-looking a young tom, at least when he was behaving himself. Urruah was only two and a half, having passed his Ordeal and started active practice a year ago. He was good at what he did, and was pleased with himself, on both professional and physical counts: a big, burly, sturdy tabby, silver and black, with silver-gray eyes, a voice all purr, some very ornamental scars, and a set of the biggest, sharpest, whitest teeth that Rhiow could remember seeing on one of the People in several lives. She occasionally wondered, when Urruah pulled dumb stunts like this, whether those teeth went straight up into his skull and filled most of it, leaving less room for sense.
"That houff," Urruah said, as they crossed Fifty-second, "took my mouse."
"Wait a minute," Saash said. "You're trying to tell us that you actually caught a mouse, when there was all that perfectly good MhHonalh's food in the Dumpster?"
Urruah gave Saash a scathing look. Saash simply blinked at him, refusing to accept delivery on the scorn, and kept on walking. "It was a terrific mouse," Urruah said. "It was one of those bold ones: it kept jumping and trying to bite me in the face. I was going to let it go after a while: you have to respect that kind of defiance! And then that miserable ehhif shows up at shift-change and lets his houff off the chain where they keep the thing all night, and it comes running out of there, jumps into the street practically on top of me, and eats my mouse! Must have a lot of wolf in it or something. But what would you have done?"
"Not ride it down the street and nearly get myself shot," Rhiow said dryly. "Or the poor houff. A good slapping around would have been plenty. And do you really expect a houff to mind People's manners? It didn't know any better. But that ehhif's reckless with the houff. And it must have been awfully hungry. I wonder what can be done about your poor mouse-eater…."
"Not our problem," Urruah said as they crossed Fifty-first.
"Everything in this city is our problem," Rhiow said, "as you know very well. I'd say you owe that houff a favor, now; you overreacted. Better arrange a meeting with one of our people on the houff side and see what can be done about him. I'll expect a report tomorrow."
Urruah growled under his breath, but Rhiow put her ears back at him. "Business, Urruah," she said. "There's work waiting for us. Put yourself aside and get ready to do what you were made to."
He sighed, and after a half a block his whiskers went forward again. "Tell me it's the northside gate again."
Rhiow grimaced. "Of course it is."
"Somebody did an out-of-hours access," Saash said, "and left it misaligned."
"The substrates still hinged?"
"Hard to tell from just the notification, but I hope so. If we go in prepared to do a subjunctive restring—"
And they were off, several sentences deep into gate-management jargon before the three of them crossed Fiftieth. Rhiow sighed. Saash and Urruah might have frictions, but the technical details of their work fascinated them both, and while they had a problem to solve they usually managed to avoid taking their claws to one another. It was before work, and after, that difficulties set in; fortunately, the team's relationship was strictly a professional one, and no rule said they had to be friends. For her own part, Rhiow mostly concentrated on balancing Saash and Urruah off against one another so that the team got its work done without claws-out transactions or murder.
Just south of the southwest corner of Fiftieth and Lex was their way down into Grand Central. Outside the delicatessen on the corner, a street grating that covered the west-side ventilation shaft was damaged, leaving room enough to squeeze through without mussing one's fur. They slipped down through it, Urruah first, then Saash and Rhiow, and followed the downward incline of the concrete shaft for a few yards until they were out of sight of the street. All of them paused to let their eyes settle, now blessedly relieved of the bright sunlight. The dimness around them began to be more clearly stitched and striated with the thin radiance of strings, properly separate now, and their colors distinct rather than blindingly run together.
"Smells awful down here today," Saash said, wrinkling her nose.
"Just your delicate sensibilities," Urruah said, grinning. "Or the flea powder."
Saash lifted a paw to cuff him, but Rhiow shouldered between them. "Not now. Your eyes better? Then let's go on."
The concrete-walled shaft was four feet wide and no more than two feet high, low enough to make you keep your tail down as you went. It stretched for about thirty feet ahead before turning off westward at a right angle, where it stopped. Under the end of the shaft was a concrete ledge, much eroded from waste water dripping down it, and below that, a drop of some ten feet to the "back yard," the northeastern bank of sidings where locomotives and loose cars were kept when the East Yard was congested with trains being moved.
One after another they jumped down, avoiding the eternal puddle of water that lay stagnant under the shaft-opening in all but the driest w
eather. In the darkness the clutter and tangle of strings was more visible than ever, and many of them were pulled curving over to a spot between Tracks 25 and 26, blossoming outward from it in all directions like a diagram of a black hole's event horizon. That particular nodal symmetry meant an open worldgate, and was the signature of Rhiow's business and her team's. With worldgates in place and working properly, wizards out on errands didn't have to spend their own precious energy on rapid transit to get where the Powers That Be assigned them. Without working gates, solutions to crises were slowed down, lives were hurt or untimely ended, and the heat-death of the Universe progressed unchecked or sometimes sped up. That was what all those in the team's line of work were sworn to stop; and moments like this, as Rhiow stood and eyed the incredible mess and tangle of malfunctioning strings, made her wonder why they all kept trying when things kept going this spectacularly wrong.
The strings curving in to the nodal junction shivered with light and with the faintest possible sound, as if all being plucked at once. And the curvature wasn't symmetrical: there should have been a matching "outward" curvature to complement the "inward" one. Taken together, the signs meant an unstable gate, which might shift phase, mode, or location without warning. "Time?" Rhiow said.
"Twenty after," Saash said.
They sprinted through the darkness, across the tracks. Though even a cat's eyes take time to adjust to sudden darkness, they had the advantage of knowing their ground; they were down here three times a week, sometimes more, slipping so skillfully among the tracks and buildings that they were seldom seen. Urruah went charging ahead, delighted as always by a challenge and a chance to show off; Rhiow was astonished to see him suddenly stumble as he came down from a jump over track. Something squealed as he fell on it.
"Irh's balls," he yowled, "it's rats! Rats!"
More squeals went up. Rhiow spat with disgust, for the rats were all over the place, like a loathsome carpet: she'd been so intent on the gate that they hadn't even registered until she ran right into them. Some rats now panicked and ran off shrieking down the tunnels, but for every three that ran, one stayed to try to slash your leg or ear.
Rhiow prided herself on having a fast and heavy paw when she needed it, and she needed it now. She disliked using the killing bite until she was sure the thing being bitten couldn't bite her back in the lip or the eye: the only way to be sure was to crush skulls and break backs first, so she got busy doing that, hitting wildly around her. Up ahead of her, Urruah was yowling delight and rage, and rats flew from every stroke. But Saash, Rhiow thought in sudden concern. She's no fighter. What if—
She looked over to the left. Saash was crouched down, her eyes gone so wide that they were just black pools with a glint of rim; a rat nearly her own size was crouched in front of her, preparing to jump. Saash opened her mouth and hissed at it.
The rat blew up.
And here I was worrying, Rhiow thought, both revolted and impressed. "Saash," she shouted over the squeals and the cracking of bones, heading after Urruah, "can you extend the range on that spell? We don't have time for this!"
Saash shook herself to get the worst of the former rat off her, hissed, and spat. "Yes," she said. "Believe me, I'd have had it ready for numbers if I'd known! Give me a moment—"
She crouched again, looking intent, and Rhiow concentrated on defending her. The rats were coming faster now, as if they knew something bad was about to happen. Rhiow felt the bite in her tail, another in her leg, and struck out all around her in a momentary fury that she knew she couldn't maintain for long. "Urruah," she yelled, "for the Dam's sake get your mangy butt back here and lend us a paw!"
The answer was a yowl that was actually cheerful in a horrible way. A moment later Rhiow could see him working back toward them by virtue of an empty space around him that moved as he moved. Rats would rush into it, but they wouldn't rush out: they went down, skulls smashed or backs broken. Once Rhiow saw Urruah reach down with that idiot grin, grab a rat perfectly in the killing-bite spot at the base of the skull, and whip around him with the thing's whole body, bludgeoning away the other rodents coming at him. It was disgusting, and splendid.
Urruah jumped right over Rhiow, turned in midair, and came down tail-to-tail with her. Together they struck at the writhing squealing forms all around, while between them Saash scowled at the dirty gravelly ground, with her eyes half-shut. "Nervous breakdown?" Urruah yelled between blows.
Rhiow was too busy to hit him. Saash ignored him completely. A moment later, she lifted her head, slit-eyed, and hissed.
Rhiow went flat-eared and slack-jawed at the piercing sound, more like a train's air-brakes than anything from a tiny cat's throat. Urruah fell over sideways as the force of it struck him. From all around them came many versions of a loathsome popping sound, like a car running over a sealed plastic bag full of liver. Everyone got sprayed with foul-smelling muck.
Silence fell. Saash got up and ran toward the track onto which the gate had slid down. Rhiow went after, followed by Urruah when he struggled to his feet. The fur rose on Rhiow's back as they went, not just from the itch of closeness to the patent gate. From back in the upper-level tunnel came a rumbling, and the tracks ticked in sympathy: the single white eye of the 6:23's headlight was sliding toward them.
Urruah saw it, too. "I could give it a power failure," he gasped as they ran. "No one would suspect a thing."
"It wouldn't stop the train before it ran through the gate."
"I could stop it—"
"You've swapped brains with your smallest flea," Rhiow hissed. The dreadful mass and kinetic energy bound up in a whole train were well beyond even Urruah's exaggerated idea of his own ability to handle. "It'll derail, and Iau only knows how many of those poor ehhif will get hurt or killed. Come on—!"
They ran after Saash. She stood in front of the gate, tail lashing violently as she looked the tangle of strings up and down, eyes half-closed to see them better. As Rhiow and Urruah came up with her, she turned.
"It's still viable," she said. "Much better than I feared. The configuration that we left it in yesterday afternoon is still saved in the strings— see that knot? And that one."
Rhiow peered at them. "Can you get them to retie?"
"Should be able to. We can reweave later: no time for it now. This'll at least shut the thing. Urruah?"
"Ready," he said. He was panting, but eager as always. "Where do you want it?"
"Just general at first. Then the substrate. Rhiow?"
"Ready," she said.
First Saash, then Urruah, and at last Rhiow, reared up and hooked claws through the bright web of strings, and began to pull. Saash leaned in deep, set her teeth into another knotted set of burning stringfire, closed her eyes and started work. The fizz and itch in the air started to get worse, while Saash's power and intention ran down the strings through the gate substrate, and the strings obediently writhed and began reweaving themselves over the gaping portal. Through the physical gate itself, not the orderly circle or sphere Rhiow was used to but just a jagged rent in the dark air, nothing could be seen: not the train, not anything else. The gate had been left open on some void or empty place. Cold dark wind breathed from it, mixing peculiarly with the hot metallic breath of the train trundling along through the dimness toward them. Oh, hurry up! Rhiow thought desperately, for she couldn't get rid of the image of the train plunging into that jagged darkness and being lost— where? No way of telling. After a catastrophic incursion by such a huge mass, certainly the gate would derange, maybe irreparably. And what would happen to the train and its passengers, irretrievably lost into some hole in existence?
Rhiow pulled forcibly away from such thoughts: they wouldn't help the work. Saash was deep in it, drowned in the concentration that made her so good at this work— claws snagged deep in the substrate as she drew strings out with paws and mind, knitted them together, released them to pull in others. Urruah, his face a mask of strained but joyous snarl like the one he had worn while killing ra
ts, fed her power, a blast of sheer intention as irresistible as the stream from a fire hose, so that the strings blazed, kindling to Saash's requirements and knitting faster every moment. This was what made Urruah the second heart of the team, despite all his bragging and bad temper: the blatant energy of a young tom in his prime, harnessed however briefly and worth any amount of skill.
Rhiow fed her energy down the weave, too, but mostly concentrated on watching the overall progress of the reweave. There, she said down the strings to the others, watch that patch there— Saash was on it, digging her forelegs into the tangle practically to the shoulders. A moment while she fished around deep inside the weave, as if feeling for a mouse inside a hole in a wall: then she snagged the string she wanted and pulled it into place, and the part of the weave that had threatened to come undone suddenly went seamless, a patch of light rather than a webwork. The tear in the darkness was healing itself. Peering around its right edge, Rhiow saw the train coming, very close now, certainly no more than a hundred yards down the track. It's going to be all right, she thought, it'll be all right, oh, come on, Saash, come on, Urruah—!
The gate substrate looked less like a bottomless hole now, and more like a flapping, flattening tapestry woven of light on a weft of blackness. The gap was narrowing to a tear, the tear to a fissure of black above the tracks. The train was fifty yards away. Still Saash stood reared up against the glowing weave of substrate, pulling some last few burning strings into order. Rhi, she thought, hold this last bit—
Half deafened, Rhiow reached in and bit the indicated strings to hold them in place while Saash worked in a final furious flurry of haste, pulling threads in and out, interweaving them. Not for the first time, Rhiow wondered what human had once upon a time seen a gate-technician of the People about her business, and later had named a human children's game with string "cat's-cradle"—