by Diane Duane
“But I’m not normal,” Arhu said, suddenly sounding very weary.
“No,” Rhiow said wearily. “And neither are we. We are all weirdoes together… but the ‘together’ is the important part.”
She sighed then. “ ’Look, I could use a small dose of normalcy myself. Let’s all go back to my neighborhood; they’re starting the day’s bout of hauissh, and we can sit and just kibitz for a while. You two skywalk over: Arhu can use the practice. No birds,” she said to Arhu, at the sight of that gleam starting to creep back into his eye. “I have a little something to take care of here; I’ll meet you there in half an hour or so. Yarn’s stoop, maybe?”
“Sounds like a plan. Come on, youngster, let’s you and the Big Bunny show them how we do it uptown.”
And Urruah turned and strolled straight out onto the air over the main concourse, forty feet up, heading for the front doors.
Eyes wide, suddenly delighted, Arhu scampered out across the air after him. Rhiow stood there, absolutely transfixed with horror lest they be seen. But no one looked up. No one in the city ever looks up.
She watched them go, unnoticed; then let out a long breath at the lunacy of toms and headed back toward the Italian deli.
* * *
When Rhiow got home, she found that her ehhif had been out as well, to dinner and a movie, and apparently had been back only a little while: Iaehh was going through the freezer, apparently hunting a frozen pizza. Rhiow walked over into the little kitchen and found her food bowl empty. She looked meaningfully at Iaehh, and said loudly, “I wouldn’t keep you waiting for your dinner.”
Iaehh shut the ffrihh and started going through the cupboards. “Sue?”
No answer. “Sue?”
“Oh, sorry, honey…” came the voice from the bedroom. “My mind was elsewhere.”
“I was looking for that tuna stuff.”
“Oh, there isn’t any … the store was out of it”
“Thank you, Queen of us all,” Rhiow said, heartfelt, and put her face down in the bowl. It was a nice hearty mixture, beef and something else: rabbit? Turkey? Who cares? Delightful.
“I’ll pick up some of it tomorrow.”
“I’ll enjoy this while it lasts,” Rhiow muttered.
“She seems to like this all right, though.”
“Good…” Hhuha said, as she came back into the living room.
“You sound tired.”
“I am tired. Another day of fighting with the damn system, and the damn network, and the damn air conditioner…”
He came over to her and held her. “I wish you could find a way to get out of there.”
Hhuha sighed. “Yeah, well, I’ve been thinking about that, too. It’s making you as unhappy as it’s making me.”
“I wouldn’t put it that strongly.”
“I would. So, listen… I’ve got an appointment in a couple of days.”
“Oh? Who with?”
“A headhunter.”
“You didn’t tell me about this!”
“I’m telling you now. The guy’s been on the phone to me a couple of times over the last year. At first I didn’t want to do anything; you know, I thought things at the office might improve.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Well, I did. But the other day I thought, ‘Okay.’ ” She snickered. “You should have seen me sneaking out to a pay phone at lunchtime, like some kind of crook.”
“Well, it wouldn’t be great for you if they heard you talking about it in the early stages of the negotiations, I admit.”
“In any stages. Someone else in the company was that dumb, last year. They were pink-slipped within minutes of the word getting out. I don’t plan to have that happen, believe me.”
“So who’s he headhunting for?”
“A couple of different companies, apparently. He’s willing to arrange interviews with both if my resume holds up. We’ll be talking about that day after next. Lunchtime appointment.”
“Hey, wow. Good luck!”
A brief silence while they nuzzled each other. “It’s a little scary,” Hhuha said after a little while. “Jumping before I’m pushed…”
“You were always the brave one.”
“No. I just hate being taken advantage of… and I’ve been starting to get that feeling…”
Another small silence. “Want to be taken advantage of now?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
They went into the bedroom, chuckling. Rhiow lifted her head to watch them go, then put her whiskers forward and went out her little door, softly, so that they would not think they had scared the cat.
* * *
On the rooftop, she lay comfortably sprawled in the still warmth. Air conditioners thundered around her, a basso rumble and rattle through the night, the fans of the cooling towers showing as gleaming disks in the light of the nearly full Moon that was sliding, golden, up the eastern sky.
Rhiow looked up at it thoughtfully. Rhoua’s Eye, its glory hidden behind the world, glanced past it (as legend had it) into the Great Tom’s eye, which reflected its light; growing from slit to eye half-open to eye round and staring, and then shrinking down to slitted eye and full-dark invisibility again, as the month went round. There were People who believed, in the face of ubiquitous evidence to the contrary, that the feline eye mirrored the Moon’s phase. Rhiow had been amazed, and very amused, to find that some ehhif had the same story.
There were wizardry connections as well. Apparently the ehhif version of The Gaze of Rhoua’s Eye, the defining document that contained descriptions of all beings and all wizardry in this particular part of the universe, originally took the form of an actual book that could be read only by moonlight: hence its ehhif name, The Book of Night with Moon. Supposedly the Book had to be read from, at intervals, to keep all existence in place, and everything correctly defined. I wouldn’t care to be the one who does the reading, Rhiow thought, looking out over the city as the Moon went quietly up the sky. Too much exposure to such power, such knowledge, and you could lose yourself as surely as you might lose yourself Downside if you stayed too long…
But mat was the danger all over wizardry: there were so many different kinds of existence, alien and fascinating, to lose your nature in… Though was this perhaps some kind of obscure bint from the Powers, Rhiow wondered, that you might be expected to lose your nature eventually? … A hint of the way things would be, someday, when the world was finally set right, and all the kinds of existence were united in timelessness, perfected and made whole, as the Oath intimated they would be?
…Maybe. But she wasn’t ready.
The question of the danger was always there, though, for a practicing wizard. When you were on the universe’s business all the time, with a wizard’s multifarious worries on your mind, were you likely to start losing your felinity? I wonder, she thought, if the ehhif wizards have this problem … if they fear losing their “humanity” as a result of having to cope with the larger worldview, the bigger maid-set, in which no language or way of life is superior to any other, and each must be valued on its own terms? I can understand why it must look crazy to Arhu that I spend so much time worrying about houiff and ehhif and whatnot.…
But then, she thought, I have ehhif of my own to think about, after all. The habit’s hard to break…
All the same… the worry niggled at her, occasionally, and was doing so again. It was something she had occasionally felt she should talk to Ehef about. But then she would get busy with some assignment…
Maybe that’s not good, Rhiow thought after a while. How many years have I been at this, now? And when did I last have a vacation from the Art? A real one, when I wouldn’t be on call, and could stay home, and eat that terrible cat food, and lie in the sun, and purr at Hhuha… and just be People…
The problem was, of course, that she knew perfectly well how much tune and energy the Powers That Be had invested in her. Go on vacation… and that invested energy would be lost, even for that little while: a
s in hauissh, any move which is not an attack means lost ground. The heat death of the universe doesn’t speed up… but it doesn’t slow down as much as it might have. Lie basking in the sun… and know that the power that runs the sun is running out at its usual speed, trickling away like blood from a wound… and you’re not doing anything to make sure the world keeps going that little bit longer to enjoy that warmth and light.
She sighed. I will know doubt, she thought, slipping into the Meditation, and fear: I will suspect myself of folly and impracticality in this seemingly hard-edged world, where things clouded or obscure are so often discounted as unimportant, and mystery is derided, and uncertainty is seen as a sign of an inability to cope. But my commission comes from Those Who move in the shadows, indistinct and unseen for Their own purpose: Those Whom we never see face to face except in the faces of those we meet from day to day. In Them is my trust, until I am relieved of Their trust in me. I will learn to live with uncertainty, for it is the earnest of Their promise that all things may yet be well; and when, in the shadows, the doubts arise, I will close my eyes and say, This is no shade to Them; for my part, I will bide here and wait for the dawn…
She closed her eyes and dozed.
* * *
Rhi, Saash’s voice came suddenly.
Rhiow opened her eyes, surprised. The Moon was much farther across the sky, westering now. “What is it?” she said. “Are you all right?”
I’m fine. But Rhiow, have you heard anything from Har’lh?
“He said he was going to talk to you after he came back from Downside,” Rhiow said.
Well, he hasn’t.
“Maybe something else came up,” Rhiow said. “He’s a Senior, for Iau’s sake. It’s not like he hasn’t got ten million people to keep an eye on.”
Rhi, you’re not listening. He hasn’t come back from Downside. The gate logs show his access… but not his egress.
Rhiow sat up, shaking her head. “He could have come back by another gate. And he did say he might take a look at the catenary if he had to—”
He’s not there. I called him. There’s no answer and no trace of any other gating. Rhi, he’s gone!
Chapter Nine
She headed for Grand Central at her best speed, which (this time of night) meant skywalking; but her concerns over this were fewer than usual. There were not that many people likely to spot a black cat in the dim predawn air, fifty stories up, and all the birds of prey were asleep.
Rhiow came down to ground level again at Forty-second and Lexington, and got herself sidled. She trotted past the Grand Hyatt, past a few drunks sitting against the walls, waiting for the station (or the nearby liquor store) to open; passed through the locked front doors, and hurried up past the waiting room…
…and stopped, looking around her suspiciously. There was something different…
The lights in the display area were mostly out, of course, with the station in closed-down mode.
No… that’s not it.
Rhiow walked past the biggest of the mounted skeletons, strolling toward the back of the room. No one hiding here… That had been the first impression: something concealing itself, hugging the shadows, waiting … Nothing. You’re nervous. Let’s get on with business.
Rhiow started to walk out again … and then paused, looked up at the biggest skeleton.
Its position was different.
Impossible. The thing weighs tons; it’s wired together much too securely to sag out of shape.
An illusion, then … born of the darkness, her nerves. The way the head hung down, the empty eyes looking at her, was creepy in this subdued lighting, seeming somehow more concentrated and immediate than they had yesterday. The nasty little front claws were held out in what might almost have been a gesture of surprise—in an ehhif, at least. Iau only knew what such a gesture might once have meant in a saurian. If there was threat in these poor dead bones, it was in the huge jaws, the serried ranks of fangs…
Rhiow thought suddenly of the back of the cavern that led into the deep Downside: the spikes of stone, the jaws ready to close…
She flirted her tail in annoyance at herself—there were much more important things to think about at the moment. She turned and galloped up into the brighter lighting of the main concourse, down to the platform for Track 30 and the gate…
* * *
Saash was there. So was another figure, an ehhif, sidled as well: Tom Swale, Har’lh’s partner-Advisory. He was a little shorter than Har’lh, a little broader in the shoulder, higher-cheekboned, and with silver-shot hair: if anything he looked more like an Area Advisory than his partner did, though he wore the same kind of informal clothes this time of day, shirt and jeans and sneakers. His easygoing face, though, was wearing an unusual expression of strain and concern.
“It’s nice to see you, Rhiow,” Tom said, hunkering down to talk to her, “but I wish to die Powers that it was under other circumstances. Saash has filled you in?”
“Yes.” Rhiow looked over at Saash, who said, “I’ve checked all the logs of all the gates here, and the Penn team has fed me all their gates’ logs as well. No sign of any access by Har’lh except to this gate: no sign of his egress from any other gate in New York, and no sign of any private gating, either.”
Almost behind her, Urruah came trotting down the platform, and greeted Tom. “You still here? There’s no sign of him yet?—”
“None. Wizards all over are looking for him. But no one’s found him… which is pretty unusual. Wizards almost always find what they’re looking for, especially when this many of them are concentrated on the task.”
“They’re looking offplanet as well?” Rhiow said.
Tom nodded. “An Area Advisory going missing is usually a fairly serious sign,” Tom said. “There’s concern at fairly high levels.”
“He wouldn’t be—dead—would he?” Saash said, with the greatest reluctance.
“I don’t think so,” Tom said. “I’m pretty sure I would know.”
“Oh, come on, Saash,” Urruah said, “you’re nuts. Have you ever heard of a Advisory dying in the line of duty?”
Tom looked at Urruah fairly gently. “Urruah,” he said, “all Advisories die in the line of duty. Any exceptions are accidents or misperceptions on the part of the living. It’s within the job description: we accept it.”
“That said,” Rhiow said, “Advisories are also tough and smart. Maybe not as powerful as they would be if they were younger; but who is? Could it be that Har’lh’s still Downside, but held somehow in a pocket of influence of some other Power”—she was not going to name names at this point—“that is making it seem that he’s not there?”
“It’s a possibility. But I’m surprised you’re eager to suggest it, since you know what it would mean.”
“I’m not eager, believe me,” Rhiow said; and a glance at the others confirmed to her that they were in agreement.
“Well.” Tom breathed out, a harassed sound. “The only good thing about all this is that it’s been a slow night; there haven’t been any other accesses down here. We don’t know for sure that this particular occurrence was aimed specifically at Carl… but we also can’t take the chance that other wizards on errantry might fall foul of it. Were these other gates, I might be concerned; but this is the master system— all the world’s gates are sourced out of me ‘tree’ structure that arises in the roots of the Mountain. That being the case, I think I’m going to have to get a little drastic, and insist that the gating system worldwide be shut down until we find Carl and get all this sorted out. It may be nothing serious at all…”
“But you doubt it,” Rhiow said.
“I doubt it. The shutdown obviously isn’t going to apply to accredited repair teams: naturally that’s going to mean you. I’m sorry to put you through this again, Rhi… but you did the most recent intervention, and the way the Powers work, that suggests you’re going to be the ones who can produce the result. How soon can you go down again?”
Rhiow
looked at Saash and Urruah. Urruah was carefully studying a crack in the concrete: Saash was scratching.
Come on, you two.
This does not work for me, Urruah growled silently.
I hate this, Saash hissed. You heard what I told you before.
Yes, I did. Well?
They both looked up at her.
She turned to look up at Tom. “Dawn would be the soonest,” Rhiow said. “I would prefer noon, though, since that way we can bring our newest member along. He’s likely to be extremely useful, but not unless he’s rested.”
Tom too examined the concrete for a few breaths. “I hate to let the trail get cold.”
“If there is a trail,” Urruah said. “I’d sooner take a little extra time in preparation, and get the job right, if we have to go down there again.”
“You’re right, of course,” Tom said. He stood up. “Let’s say noon, then. I’ll mind your upper gate for you this time: Carl and I have been working together long enough now that I may be able to help you somehow. Otherwise I’ll be in a position to get you backup in a hurry should you need it.”
Rhiow flirted her tail “yes,” though privately she was unsure how fast any backup was going to be able to reach them, if they were going to have to go as far down the “tree” structure as she feared they would. “I want an override,” she said, “on the number and power of wizardries we can bring down with us. I feel we’re going to need to be unusually well armed this time, and while I know the Powers are chary of letting people throw spells around like water, I think our workload the last few days, and the resistance we met last time, are going to justify it.”
Tom looked at her thoughtfully, then nodded. “All right,” he said, “I’ll take it up with the North American Supervisor.”
“Don’t just take it up, T’hom. I want it done. Otherwise—”