On Her Majesty's Wizardly Service fw-2

by Diane Duane

  “I don’t know,” Rhiow said at last. “Normally, you would think so. But the Egyptians” relationship with their cats plainly didn’t stop when the cats were dead. Indeed, they didn’t think they were dead, not in the sense that ehhif use the word now: the whole idea of preserving the body itself indicates that someone thinks you might need it again,”

  Rhiow fell silent and thought about that for a moment. Until now she had been holding this particular ehhif belief as somewhat barbaric, almost funny, the result of a misunderstanding—for indeed People had told the ehhif of those long-past days how their own lives went: nine lives, nine deaths, and if you had done more good in your life than evil, there followed a tenth life in a body immune to the more crass aspects of physicality, like injury, decay and age—the fully-realized Life of which the previous nine had been rough sketches. The ehhif, as so often happened, had gotten some of the details of this story muddled, and thought “their” cats were telling them about immortality after life in a physical body. With this understanding, the ehhif of Egypt, an endlessly practical people, had started working on ways to preserve the bodies of the dead—human as well as feline—with an eye to making sure those bodies would last until they were needed again. Over nearly a millennium of practice, mummification had become a science (as these ehhif regarded such things), elaborate, involved … and here and there, with a touch of wizardry about it.

  Now, though, this set of circumstances seemed less silly to Rhiow … and much more intriguing. The One, and Her daughters the Powers that Be, rarely did anything without a purpose. Could it be that all the magnificent sarcophagi and paintings, all the riches piled and buried in all the tombs, the folly and the glory of it, were all a blind … a distraction, meant for the one Power which was less than kindly disposed toward life? A feint, a misdirection, a behavior which externally seemed humorously typical of the stupidities of ehhif … but one concealing something far more important? The mummified bodies of hundreds of thousands of People, lying in the sand, forgotten: a resource, a well of potential…

  …a weapon.

  Rhiow did not have the kind of confusion about bodies which ehhif all too often had. Once you were out of it for good, a body was meat: whatever happened to it, you didn’t care, and those around you were expected to do no more (if it was convenient) than try to drag it off somewhere a little private, where the elements of the world would dispose of it in their own fashion. Rhiow knew that the People who had once inhabited those now-mummified bodies would be far beyond caring what happened to their mortal remains. Either they would have run their nine lives’ term and ended so, subsumed back into the endless purr which lay behind the merely physical Universe, as was the way of most of the People; or they would be ten lives along now, in bodies so much better suited to their needs that they would laugh at the mere thought of the old ones. If their two-thousand-year-old remains had to be used somehow as a weapon against the Lone One, not one of them would object.

  But those bodies were ground up, now, and spread over half the counties of this island. Certainly they were too far scattered for the kind of intervention which this spell construct would require.

  Rhiow looked at the construct. Well, she said to the Whisperer, … will it work?

  A long, long pause.

  Maybe…

  She got up and stretched. “The only thing we haven’t decided,” she said to Huff, “is when we’re going to do this.”

  “It’s been rather a long day,” Huff said, and glanced over at Auhlae, who was giving him a thoughtful look. To this particular piece of work, I’d like to come well rested. Tomorrow night?”

  The others all nodded.

  “Shall I come with you?” Ith said.

  Rhiow looked at him with some unease. The concern about the Father of his People risking himself comes up again,” she said. “You’d better take it up with Them. But I for one would value your company.”

  She glanced at Huff. He twitched his tail “yes”. “See where your responsibilities lie, cousin,” he said to Ith, “and then join us if you can. But this work alone, I think, is likely to be of great use.” He glanced at the hexaract.

  Ith got up. “I will go to my own, then,” he said, “and consult with the Powers.” He bowed to the group, and laid his tail over Arhu’s for a moment: then he stepped into the air again, and was gone.

  “What about Siffha’h?” Arhu said.

  “What about her?” said Fhrio. The growl was missing … just.

  “Nothing,” Arhu said, and sighed, and got up. “Absolutely nothing at all.”

  “Come on, Ruah,” Rhiow said. “Let’s get home and take a look around. Huff, Auhlae …” She touched cheeks with them: after doing so with Huff, she paused a second, seeing something in his eyes that she couldn’t quite classify.

  “It’ll be all right,” Rhiow said.

  “Of course it will,” Huff said: and his whiskers went forward ever so slightly. “Till tomorrow night, cousin: dai stihó.”

  They made their way home together, Rhiow and Urruah and Arhu, and stepped out with some relief from the long station platforms, out into the echo and bustle of the Main Concourse. Sidled, they walked through it without too much concern for the ehhif. It was getting late on a Saturday evening, and growing quiet. Above them, the “stars” burned backwards in the zodiac of a feigned Mediterranean sky: but the breezes that blew by under the great arched ceiling bore mostly the scents of the last fresh-ground coffee of the day, and a lingering aroma of pizza and cold cuts.

  Urruah breathed deeply. “You know,” he said, “their gating complex is very historic and all, all those old buildings and castles and whatnot … but I like ours better.”

  “You just prefer the food,” Rhiow said.

  “Yeah, well, I intend to have a seriously big dinner tonight,” Urruah said, “and then a whole night’s sleep in my dumpster. Who knows if I’ll ever see it again?”

  Rhiow glanced over at him. “You’re really worried, aren’t you,” she said.

  “I think I have reason. Don’t you?”

  There was little evidence to suggest otherwise. There was no question that the situation was dangerous. But having granted that, Rhiow saw no advantage in dwelling on it. “If worrying would help,” she said, “I’d be right in there with you. But I’ve no evidence that it makes any difference.”

  “Optimist,” Urruah said.

  “Pessimist,” Rhiow said.

  “And which side do you come down on?” Urruah said to Arhu, who was walking between them, silent.

  “Neither,” Arhu said. “I’d sooner wait to see which way to jump.”

  He looked a little dubious. “But you know, Rhiow, Ruah, it’s all just probabilities. I see things … but there’s always that little warning hovering at the edge of them. “It may not turn out this way.” He sighed. “Very annoying …”

  “I don’t know,” Rhiow said. “I’d think it might be worse if what you saw always happened, and there was no escape. That would be depressing. As well as boring: nothing would ever surprise you …”

  “Give me no surprises,” Urruah said definitely. “Give me certainty over uncertainty any time. I’ll take the boredom and be grateful.”

  Rhiow laughed at him … but the laughter was slightly hollow. “So let’s postulate best case for a moment,” she said. “Say the Queen is assassinated. Is there any slightest chance, do you think, that the war might not happen, despite what Arhu Saw? As he says, it’s still only probability …”

  Urruah flirted his tail sideways in a gesture of complete uncertainty as they walked past the shining brass central information booth. “Even in our own world,” he said, “the only reason ehhif managed to keep the Winter from falling for so long was that there were two great powers that had atomic weapons … and everyone was sure that, no matter which one of them started the fight, everyone’s throat would be ripped out before it was finished. And even then there were close calls. That one ehhif President who got lucky, for exam
ple … because spies and wizards were in the right places at the right time, to help him covertly or tell him what he needed to know to maneuver properly in that nasty little game of hauissh that he and his enemy were playing. Luck, yes, and the Powers’ intervention … and not much else … that saved them. But in that alternate eighteen seventy-four, there’s just one power that has the bomb. There is no great counterbalance against the British power to keep them from using it. The only thing that could save them is if their great politicians suddenly became cautious … and what do you think the odds are on that?”

  “With the ehhif Disraeli as the Queen’s main minister at that point?” Rhiow shook her head. “From what Hhuhm’hri told me, the chances are slim and none. If the Queen dies, he’ll use the excuse to sweep all the lesser ‘troublemaking’ nations away before him. He’s been looking for an excuse to do that, I’d say, for a long time: certainly in our own world he was not exactly a cautious ehhif, or one to back down when provoked. At this time-period, in our own world, he was busy trying to get the Queen to take another title, as a kind of over-Queen of another prides’-pride of ehhif. ‘Empress’, they called it. She finally let him talk her into it, or flatter her, rather. Granted, that turned out to be a less destructive act of aggression … but the act was dam to a litter of results, later on, that cost many ehhif their lives. It’s still doing so, in fact.” Rhiow twitched her tail, troubled.

  “In other words,” Urruah said, “if given the excuse, he’ll bomb the rebellious prides right back into the Stone Age.”

  “And his own pride as well,” Arhu said. “Just what the Lone One wants.”

  “The warning is written on the Moon,” Rhiow said, “as we saw. That’s what It intends the Earth to look like after It’s done.”

  “And the situation might get still worse,” Urruah said. “It seems that these ehhif lose their positions, or change them, without warning and at short notice. What if someone comes in as Prime Minister who’s less tolerant than the ehhif holding the position now?”

  “Please,” Rhiow said. It was an uncomfortable enough situation as it was. “Our problem is that, whoever rules that world, the period is not one that likes to refrain from technology, once it gets its hands on it. The Victorians like technology, the more aggressive the better. They like mastering and dominating their world … and each other. They have done some great works that have lasted into our own time, it’s true … but they also did a great deal of evil. They routinely acted without due consideration of the effects.”

  “I Saw a lot of things that looked like that,” Arhu said, “with Odin. The ehhif took what they got from the book and mostly kept it for themselves. There are a lot of ehhif on this planet, in that time, but the ones with the technology weren’t in a sharing mood. They wanted to keep themselves the top of the ‘prides-of-prides’. Every now and then they would give a little of the information to some of the other prides, the ‘countries’, as a present. A way to prove how powerful they were. But the best of it, the parts that really mattered, or were really dangerous, they kept to themselves.” His ears were flat back. “It’s like caching food. I don’t understand how they can do that.”

  “It would probably be pretty foolish of us to expect them not to treat nuclear technology the way they treated all the others …” Urruah said. “So … does that answer your question?”

  Rhiow sighed. “I just hope Ith can get that spell working,” she said.

  They walked to the Forty-Second Street entrance and looked out through the brass doors. Forty-Second was in full flower, streams of traffic flowing by in both directions, and ehhif walking past, running, chatting, shouting, taking their time in the soft evening air. Rhiow glanced up leftward, a little over her shoulder, to see the light-accented, graceful curves of the Chrysler Building rearing up shinning into the evening sky, the city-light gilding it from underneath. Even at the best of times, she thought, even when life seems normal, who among us can say with certainty that we’ll see this world again tomorrow? Entropy stalks the world in all its usual shapes, and some less usual than others. I’ll meet them, the strange and the deadly, but I don’t need to crouch in fear or bristle at them in show of defiance. I know my job. My commission comes from Those Who Are. We stand together, They and I, in protection of the world They made and I keep. We may lose: there is always that chance. But meanwhile We keep watch at the borders, and contest the Lone One’s passage. We will not let it be easy. We will not fall without selling ourselves dearly. And when in the worlds’ evening we fall at last, and finally come home, We will find that we have brought with us what we love, bound to us forever by blood and intention: and the Lone One will stand with Its claws empty, and howl Her anger at the night. Then we will say, That was a good fight that we won: and come the dawn, We will make another world, and play the play again…

  She swallowed, and glanced around her. Urruah was looking at her thoughtfully. He leaned over, bumped noses with her, and said, “See you tomorrow evening …”

  Urruah walked off down Forty-Second to the corner of Vanderbilt, and dodged around it and out of sight. Rhiow looked away from him, over to Arhu, and said, “And what about you?”

  “I think I have an appointment,” he said, and bumped noses with her too, laying his tail briefly over his back. “See you later …”

  He walked off toward the corner of Lexington, slipped around it, and was gone.

  Rhiow stood there by the doors and watched her city go by: then, sidled, she lifted her head high, stepped up into the air, and skywalked home.

  Iaehh was there, and in quiet mood, when she got in. He fed her, and afterwards sat in the reading chair, and Rhiow made herself comfortable in his lap and tried to doze.

  She couldn’t manage it for a while. He wasn’t reading for a change tonight, and he didn’t even turn on the TV: he just sat in the dimness and stroked her, and Rhiow just sat and let him. It was strangely like the days when Hhuha had been here, and she would simply sit with Rhiow in her lap, not doing anything but being there.

  Slowly Iaehh began to fall asleep that way. She looked up at him and saw how tired he looked: his face was more drawn than it had used to be, and he was losing weight. What are we going to do about you, Rhiow thought. Hhuha would not like to see you this way. You are so unhappy.

  We’ve got to find you somebody.

  Then she felt like laughing at herself. The world may start to stop existing next week, or the week after that, if we fail, Rhiow thought, and here I am thinking about matchmaking for my ehhif. Yet there was no question that he did need somebody, and she was going to have to do something about it.

  And what about me? she thought. There would be no mates for her, and no kittens. Huff might be a good acquaintance now, might be a friend later. Yet Rhiow was feeling the need for something more. I must go looking, she thought, and see what’s available for a wizard who’s been spending too much time in work, and not enough in having a social life.

  Assuming the universe doesn’t end later this month…

  She sighed and lay back in Iaehh’s lap. The end of the universe would have to take care of itself. Right now she was home with her ehhif, and had had a good dinner. Just this once, she would lie still, and let it all pass her by: and tomorrow evening, no matter what happened, she would be able to look the Powers in the face and say, I have been a Person: and after that, what matters?

  Much later, in the darkness, Rhiow realized that she was having a vision. It shouldn’t have surprised her, in retrospect, she thought: the ravens had already shown her that vision was transferable. It hadn’t immediately occurred to her that others might learn that trick: but it seemed that at least one had.

  You made me do it, he said. So you had to see what happened. It was your act … even though I enacted it.

  In the vision he was walking down the bike path next to the East River. There had been a time when he had been unable to go anywhere near that body of water: the mere sound of it had been a horror to him. Now, t
hough, he walked down the path and listened to the water chuckling underneath the walkway, listened to it slapping against the concrete piers, and didn’t mind a bit. The voices in it were friendly now.

  He was looking for someone, and waiting for something: and because this was his vision, he knew he would shortly find both.

  Ith had given him the hint, as often happened these days. The same venom will not work twice—you will begin to develop an immunity.

  At first he had rejected this idea. But Ith was wise, in his way. The more you looked at something that frightened you, or horrified you, the easier it got. This was probably how ehhif became conditioned to killing. In their case, it was a fatal flaw. But in this case, the function was different. Become used to your own death, to the point where it no longer hurts you—and your Enemy is suddenly without a weapon.

  He had done it twice tonight already. He was becoming an expert at dying.

  The third time would pay for all.

  It was not that long until he saw the pale shape of the slender young Person walking nervously down the bike path. Indeed it shouldn’t have been very long: you would be a poor kind of Seer if you couldn’t tell when people were going to turn up for appointments, so you didn’t have to stand around waiting. As she came, he stepped out and got in her way.

  She spat at the sight of him. “You—! Get out of my way.”

  “No,” he said. “If you want me to move, you’re going to have to fight.”

  “Then I’ll fight. You think I’d have trouble with that? I hate you! You killed me!”

  “No, I didn’t. But you know Who did.”

  “You’re crazy. Get out of my way!”

  “No,” he said. “Not till you admit what you are.”

  “Oh?” She sneered. “And what am I?”

  “A twin. Half of a pair.”

  “Not any more. You put an end to that.”

  “Nothing can put an end to it,” he said. “Roles may change temporarily. But this time they haven’t. I’m a Seer. But you—you’re something else. Or you will be.”