The Big Meow

by Diane Duane

  Urruah stood up and stretched too, giving the Silent Man an approving look. “I think we have something in common there,” he said. “Night’s our time. Though we’re not beyond hunting in daylight when the circumstances call for it.”

  “Which is a business we should be about,” Rhiow said. “If you have a map, and can show us the places from which the Lady in Black appeared and then disappeared, we’ll go have a look.”

  Why waste time with maps? the Silent Man said, pushing back from his desk. I’ll show you myself.

  Rhiow stood up as the ehhif did. Well, she said, a little concerned, we wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble —

  Besides, might be smart to have some cover. You guys can’t just go parading around down there by yourselves, after all. There are people and dogs and traffic…

  “Oh,” Urruah said, putting his whiskers forward in amusement, “dogs… I wouldn’t worry about the dogs. In fact, if I were them, I’d worry — ”

  Could you cut out the tom stuff for a moment? Rhiow said silently “Actually,” she said aloud, “though your concern does you credit, you needn’t worry: no one’s going to see us unless we want them to.”

  You mean you can vanish or something?

  “Urruah?” Rhiow said.

  Urruah, his whiskers forward, jumped down from the desk, turned around to face the Silent Man, and then took a step sideways, sidling as he did so. He took his time about it, and went so far to control the effect that his face, set in what an ehhif used for a grin, lingered slightly longer than the rest of him before it disappeared.

  The Silent Man didn’t even blink. Now I know some people who’d find that talent a whole lot too handy, he said, as Urruah slipped back into visibility again. Probably better that the technique stays under wraps.

  “So you see,” Hwaith said, “we’ll have no problem avoiding notice.”

  Sure, the Silent Man said, but that has to take some effort.

  “Well, it does,” Urruah said, “but – “

  And why should you bother? Everybody around here knows Sheba. She goes out with me all the time. Why wouldn’t she bring some of her chums along for a stroll on the Boulevard? Nobody’d think twice. This is Hollywood, and you’re with me.

  Urruah began to purr so loudly that Rhiow was surprised the windows didn’t rattle. “Cousin,” she said, “you’re kind to want to save us trouble.” She put her whiskers forward. “And I confess, it’d be fun…”

  The Silent Man glanced at his watch. Come on, he said. We’ll go down there, have a look around at the first couple of your places, grab an early lunch.

  “But you’ve been out all night,” Rhiow said.

  Couldn’t sleep now if I tried, the Silent Man said. Besides, now you’ve got me wondering about some things I missed at first glance. Wouldn’t mind asking a few more questions myself. You can tell Sheba what we’re planning, I take it?

  “Of course,” Rhiow said. “I think she’ll be delighted.”

  “It’ll be something of a walk down to Hollywood and Highland – “ Hwaith said.

  Walk? The Silent Man looked at Hwaith with a cockeyed expression. Are you from here? Who walks in LA?

  And that was how they wound up being driven into the heart of Hollywood in the back seat of a sky-blue 1941 Lincoln Continental, by the Silent Man himself.

  Iau only knows what the neighbors think of this, if they’re watching, Rhiow thought as she and Urruah and Hwaith wandered down the pathway to the street in Sheba’s wake.

  And when we’re talking, said the Silent Man, as he opened the car door, no one’s going to be able to hear us?

  “No one we don’t want to,” Urruah said. “You’ll want to make sure your mouth doesn’t move when you’re saying something, that’s all. We can hear you subvocalizing just fine.”

  The Silent Man shook his head. All right, then, he said. We’ll go down to where I saw her, have a quick look around. Then you’ll let me know what else you need. Everybody in…

  Sheba, long used to the drill, leapt up inside and curled herself down comfortably in the front seat, opposite the driver’s side. “It’s so much fun to do this and know what’s going to happen for a change!” Sheba said. “And it’s great to go down to town: everybody’s going to make a big fuss over us. Now I know that leather back there is slippery, but try not to sink your claws in any deeper than you need to on the curves. You won’t have to hang on very hard: he’s a careful driver…”

  Rhiow jumped up into the broad back seat and looked around her with surprise. Rhiow’s experience of ehhif mechanical transport until now had been limited to the occasional New York cab, when her own ehhif had taken her to the vet for checkups and so forth. But this roomy solidity took her by surprise, and the luxury of the fittings: they were real leather, real wood. Rhiow was, however, also surprised by some of the omissions. No seat belts? she said silently to Urruah, as he and Hwaith jumped up behind her, and the Silent Man shut the door. Have they repealed the laws of physics on the highways here?

  Urruah’s tail was waving from side to side as he sat down beside her. It took the ehhif a little while to wrap their brains around the concept of auto safety, Urruah said. Or that they would have to pay more for it. I’ll grant you, these cars aren’t as safe as the ones at our end of time. But they’re handsomer…

  For her own part, Rhiow would happily enough have exchanged any amount of handsomeness for the knowledge that the occupants of the car she was riding in weren’t about to be thrown all over the place if something hit it. But as the Silent Man got into the driver’s seat, started the car up and pulled away from his house, she felt a little reassured: he seemed to be driving very slowly indeed.

  “Can’t be doing more than twenty-five miles an hour,” Urruah said under his breath. “Looks like we’re riding with someone who actually takes the local speed limit seriously….”

  And it seemed that he was right. After a minute or so, as they turned a corner, Rhiow relaxed enough to stand up on her hind legs and put her forepaws up against the bottom of the rear window. The car slid down yet another street lined with broad sidewalks and houses set well back from the street behind well-watered green lawns, then turned yet another corner.

  Even the house-lined streets they’d been in until now were fairly wide: now they had come out on a wide boulevard that looked at least as broad as a New York avenue. It was lined with low buildings, mostly shops and stores and the occasional hotel or bank or other office building.

  “Oh, now look at this,” Urruah said, in the kind of voice one would normally reserve for suddenly seeing something of great beauty or wonder.. He had somehow managed to get the back window on his side open; and now he was sticking his head out of it, staring at something they were passing. Rhiow dropped to the seat again and looked over to the other side of the car, seeing what looked like a long red bus.

  “It’s a hRhed Kharr!” Urruah said. “Oh, Iau, thank you for letting me see this!”

  Rhiow was tempted to simply squeeze her eyes shut and stop watching: Urruah was so far beyond delight at the moment that she suspected he was on the point of letting his tongue flap in the air like a houff. All she could do was put her whiskers forward at the sight of the amused ehhif looking down at him from the “Red Car”, which it turned out was no bus, but some sort of trolley that slid demurely past them on rails. Rhiow sat down by Hwaith and said quietly, “Cousin, you’ve got to forgive him: he does believe so deeply in complete cultural immersion…”

  Hwaith’s whiskers were forward too. “Rhiow, it’s not a problem,” he said. “Where would our tourist industry be without tourists?” The Red Car glided away in a splendor of sunlit crimson, and Urruah was already craning his neck to look at something else.

  Hwaith, for his part, was looking thoughtfully at the back of the Silent Man’s head. About a hundred things you didn’t say to him just now, Hwaith said silently.

  What…about the strictly spiritual side of things? Probably it’s wiser to k
eep our conversations with the Whisperer out of the ehhif public domain for the moment. He’s a hard-headed one, the Silent Man: but I wouldn’t stretch that hardness too far just yet.

  And what about his “Lady in Black?” You have some suspicions about what she might be, I think. What are you going to tell him about her? Or should I say “it?”

  Rhiow’s eyes widened, and her tail lashed. Hwaith had quickly reached one of her own conclusions, one she very much hoped was more pessimistic than the reality. I’ll bite that rat’s throat when we’ve caught it, she said. Especially since there are almost too many suspicions, at this point…and even the Whisperer didn’t sound as if She was eager to see the worst of them vindicated.

  But will She, though? That’s the question.

  The unnerved sound of Hwaith’s thought made Rhiow look at him with some concern. This part of the world, Hwaith said, has its own peculiarities. Plenty of wizards, to be sure. But there are old powers and influences here that can bubble up without warning…and when they do, it can take considerable intervention to quiet them down again. He looked out the window, blinking, as if the light suddenly bothered him. That’s how my predecessor on the gates went; old Fu’ahh. He stumbled into a sinkhole in the hills – a pool of old power that had gone live in response to something some ehhif had stirred up. Hwaith’s tail was lashing now, and his eyes had gone veiled over an expression of anger and pain. We never did find out what caused that flareup…

  We might now, Rhiow said, if we keep our eyes open, and watch what we do.

  Hwaith gave her such a look of naked gratitude that Rhiow hardly knew where to look, except away. There’s something I hadn’t known. How lonely has he been since he lost his mentor? Does he think it’s his fault somehow? This may complicate things…

  The car slowed, stopped. Rhiow looked up and out the nearest window, and was glad to see a distraction: a strange iron shape rearing up behind one of the buildings on the south side of the boulevard, near the middle of the block. It made her think of the top level of the Empire State Building, marooned by itself on the ground and looking rather out of place. Urruah caught her glance. “A radio tower?” he said.

  What? That monstrosity? Not a chance. Look at the size of it. That’s the hot new thing…or so they tell us. Television. The Silent Man shook his head.

  Urruah stared. “Really? Surely it’s too – oww!“

  He turned and looked over his shoulder at Rhiow, who had just reached up and stuck a claw in his butt. She narrowed her eyes at him. You were just about to tell him some of the future? Don’t get carried away here!

  Too what? the Silent Man said.

  “Uh, sorry. Too small for a TV antenna?” Urruah said.

  The Silent Man laughed that hissing laugh again. “TV”, he said. Cute. Too small, though? This one screws up the local skyline more than somewhat as it is. Paramount had a heck of a time getting the city to give them permission for the thing – but finally they got their way. Though whether they’ll be glad about that in ten years, who knows? There’s maybe three hundred television receiver sets in LA. Most of them belong to people with a lot of money. What do you expect when one of the things costs a hundred bucks? The rest are homemade – one of the transmission companies that was trying to start up actually mailed out flyers to people with instructions on how to build their own receivers. Don’t know what kind of takeup they got.

  The Silent Man shrugged as the signal changed and he pulled the sedan into the intersection for a right turn. I think W6XYZ there is just a loss leader: Paramount’s using it to get more attention for its movies. They’ve been trying to get a commercial license for the service for years now, but the government’s had a whole lot of other things to think about. Now that the war’s over, though — You ask me, the radio people have been greasing some palms in Washington to keep things just the way they are. Don’t see why they’re worried, though. He smiled one of those cynical smiles that Rhiow was already getting used to the sight of. Who’d sit home squinting at a blurry movie on one of those little dinky tubes when you can go for a night out with your doll and see it in a beautiful gilded picture palace? And the only other thing they’re talking about doing on television is some kind of program with a host interviewing people. They’re calling it a ‘talk show’. Who’s going to spend a hundred bucks on a box that just shows people sitting around talking?

  “Who indeed,” Rhiow said. She glanced over at Urruah again. Are you settled down a little, now? Can you please remember what decade you’re in?

  Uh, yeah. But, Rhi — Urruah climbed carefully onto the back of the front seat, balancing there next to the brim of the Silent Man’s hat and peering forward through the windshield. Then he leapt down into the front seat beside Sheba. Our guy here is really enjoying talking to someone without having to run it through paper first. Big pieces, or little ones…

  Yes, Rhiow said, I gathered that. There was something else about his tone that was jogging her memory. The Silent Man’s voice reminded her of the way Iaehh sounded, some evenings, when some colleague from work called him: as if he wanted to keep them talking past the mere business at hand – the sound of someone afraid of the silence that would eventually fall, a silence that had once had another voice in it, now no longer to be heard except in memory. And even memory fades…

  Here we go, said the Silent Man. We’ll park here and walk over. He pulled up to the curb, killed the engine, and stepped out of the car, opening the back door on the curb side for the rear-seat passengers.

  Rhiow and Hwaith jumped down onto the sidewalk and stood there, glancing around them, as the Silent Man reached in to get Sheba out, and Urruah followed. “This is where it happened?” he said.

  “This is it,” said the Silent Man, settling Sheba comfortably on his shoulder. He headed up to the corner, and stopped there.

  Rhiow and the others followed him, pausing to gaze upward at the astonishing structure that took up what had to be at least the next half of this block of Hollywood Boulevard and reached well back along Highland. “This,” Rhiow said to Hwaith, “…is a hotel?”

  “One of the better ones,” Hwaith said.

  It occurred to Rhiow that taking it all in was going to require some time. But then I’m used to New York hotels. Relatively small buildings, in terms of the space they take up on a block…and relatively sedate. Whereas it seemed that the only thing this building’s architect had lacked was sedation. The place was a complex vista of white stucco and red tile, with a confusion of terraces and porticoes and awnings and cupolas and even what appeared to be a couple of dome-topped bell towers. The terraces and balconies on the Boulevard side were set back from the street by a couple of sidewalks’ width of plantings, and sheltered – if that was the word for a building so exhibitionistic – by a row of fine tall palm trees.

  Quite something, huh? said the Silent Man.

  “Unique,” Rhiow said, putting her whiskers forward.

  “Spanish Revival, they call it,” Hwaith said to Urruah as they stood there gazing up at the little tiled portico that sheltered the entry to the Hollywood Hotel’s bar.

  Revival? Rhiow thought. …Possibly because it fainted after they woke it up the first time, and it saw what had happened to it…? She waved her tail in a gesture of irony that she hoped would be lost on a watching ehhif, and regarded the portico. HOLLYWOOD HOTEL CORNER, a sign above it proclaimed, as if seriously thinking it could redefine the nearby intersection in its own terms. “So this is where you came out,” Rhiow said, “and saw the Lady in Black…”

  This is the spot.

  “Good,” Rhiow said, as she caught sight of two small mostly-white shapes coming along toward them under the palm trees. They were looking at Rhiow with interest, and slight confusion. Sightseeing, Rhi? one of them said silently. And out in the open? We done here already?

  Arhu’s tone was surprisingly edgy, in marked contrast to the sound of it just a couple of hours ago. Siffha’h was walking quite close to him, a kind of bo
dy language that Rhiow had started to recognize as suggesting that she was troubled by her brother’s rattled state.

  Not just yet, Rhiow said. Granted, the situation looks unusual, but bear with me for the moment. We’ve turned up something interesting with this ehhif’s help. Some kind of apparition was out here before dawn… possibly even a revenant. But the only ones who saw it were ehhif. We need a better look.

  Arhu glanced curiously up at the Silent Man as he and Siffha’h came strolling up to the group and paused at the corner. For his own part, the Silent Man looked at them almost without surprise. More of your people, Blackie? he said to Rhiow.

  “The younger members of our team,” Rhiow said. “This one, Arhu, is gifted in a particular way that will be helpful to us. He sees what’s going to be…”

  “Which is useful,” Arhu said, “but sometimes not as useful as seeing what’s been.” He looked over at Rhiow. “How long before dawn did this apparition turn up?”

  “Maybe two hours before the Eye came up?” Rhiow said to Hwaith. He waved his tail “yes.” “Four AM, as ehhif reckon it. See what you can See.”

  “Got to do something about this traffic first,” Siffha’h said, and sat down at the corner, looking out at the intersection.

  All the traffic lights promptly turned yellow, and then red.

  Now that’s a gift, said the Silent Man, as the traffic in all four directions came to a halt.

  Arhu sidled himself and wandered out into the intersection. “Give me five minutes,” he said.

  The Silent Man watched with interest, backing up to lean against one side of the tiled portico, like one ehhif casually waiting to meet another. On his shoulder, Sheba settled herself down with her paws pressed together, and closed her eyes. Don’t think you’ll have that long, said the Silent Man, shaking his head as he looked for any sign of where Arhu had gone. They’ll start jumping the lights…