The Big Meow

“Well, up here close to us – “ Helen was tracing one curving, switchbacking road with a forefinger: the road went bright where her finger had been. “This isn’t my normal patrol area: I’m normally down in Wilshire and Central, and these roads are hard to keep straight…but not many of them go all the way across to the Valley. So that has to be either Laurel Canyon or Coldwater Canyon…”

“It’s Laurel,” Hwaith said. He peered at the light that shone just off to one side of it. “That cross street, the little one running up the side canyon…that should be Prospect Trail… No, Highland Trail. Either way, it’s interesting, because that was the epicenter of two of our earthquakes last week…”

“Was it now,” Rhiow said softly, looking over his shoulder.

“Not much built up yet, by the looks of things,” Helen said.

“No. There are a few old houses, and a new mansion: some ehhif involved with real estate in the Midwest built that before the Hurw’sshehhif.” It was the Ailurin term for what ehhif called their Second World War.

“That’s going to be worth looking at, perhaps,” Helen said. “And this, down here by the ocean – “

“The ehhif call that ‘Santa Monica’,” Hwaith said. “Lots of houses, some of the big ffihlm studios have lots near there…”

“Any quakes there?” Urruah said.

“Not recently,” said Hwaith. “But some months back we had one.”

Helen nodded.“And then there’s this.” She reached out to point at another spot, more westerly and closer to the hills. “Those two six-point intersections are kind of hard to miss. Sunset Boulevard, where Beverly and Crescent cross each other?”

“That’s right,” Hwaith said, peering more closely at the map.

“That’s the Beverly Hills Hotel in your time?”

“Oh yes,” Hwaith said, “but it doesn’t look like the hotel’s the marked spot, does it – “ He put one of his own paws on the map: the streetscape enlarged, but the light stayed the same size, relocating itself as the map changed. “No, it’s one of those little streets behind it. Rochdale, I think. Now why under the Eye would the gate be wanting to put a root down there?”

Or why would it be told to? Rhiow thought.“But it doesn’t matter,” Hwaith said. “I know a Person very close to there who knows everything that goes on inside that place.”

“Perhaps you might introduce us,” Rhiow said.

“As soon as we’re done here, I’ll take you right down,” Hwaith said. “The time of day’s no issue: there are People in and out of her place by light or night. And whoever else is interested should come too…though I assume we’re going to be splitting up to check out the root locationsseparately.”

“It makes most sense, I’d guess,” Urruah said. He glanced up at Helen. “Maybe you want to choose the one where an ehhif wizard could come by the most information,” he said.

Helen looked at the map.“Hard to say where that might be,” she said. But as Rhiow watched her, Helen slipped a hand inside her shirtfront and touched something hidden there that hung from her throat. For a second she held very still.

Though no words of the Speech were spoken aloud, to Rhiow there was no mistaking the slight scent of some kind of ehhif wizardry on the air. Faintly Rhiow thought she heard something odd in the middle distance, like sticks cracking or snapping. No, she thought then, as she smelled smoke, and glanced around her quickly. Like fire in brush. But there wasn’t any fire —

Then Rhiow was jolted out of her analysis by the raucous noise of some kind of bird braying at them all from up in a nearby pine tree. It was an extraordinary noise, suggesting something mechanical rather than biological, and something that needed a session in the shop and a lube job, at that.

Hwaith laughed under his breath, a little audible trill.“Dawn’s coming,” he said. “The jays always know.”

“That was a bluejay?” Arhu said, looking up into the tree, and licking his chops.

“Not one of your little eastern ones,” Hwaith said. “This one’s a crow relative.”

“The melodious voice,” Rhiow said, “is a giveaway.” She sighed. “Well, we should get moving. Aufwi, Hwaith, is this gate likely to move if we leave it here?”

They both waved their tails“no”. “It seems like all its intent’s to stay right where it is,” Aufwi said. “For the moment, that seems just as well. Of course we’ll have to put up some kind of bounding spell to keep it hidden, and keep ehhif and everything else away from it.”

“We’ll take care of that,” Arhu said, as Siff’hah collapsed her map spell.

“Stay clear of its control structures when you ward it,” Urruah said. “You don’t want to jostle it into doing something while you’re setting up the spell.”

“Which brings us to the next question,” Rhiow said. “The roots… Can you keep it from putting any more down? We’ve got enough problems as it is.”

“I should be able to prevent it,” Aufwi said. “I’ll shout if there seem to be any problems.”

Rhiow was somehow sure that there would be. And one more thing to check yet, she thought. But a moment for that. She glanced up at Helen.“Well,” she said, “what did your ikheya say?”

Helen grinned at her.“Caught that, did you,” she said. “He says, Since you People have an ehhif with you, she might as well see what kind of news other ehhif can give her while you folks are discovering what you can from other People. I’ll take myself downhill to the Library and have a look at the papers…see what news the world throws in my way.”

“But not like that – !” Hwaith said, sounding rather distressed all of a sudden. “Queen-ehhif don’t dress that way these days – “

“Oh, no, not like that at all,” Helen said. “I thought I’d wear something like this – “

The change was so abrupt it made Rhiow blink. One moment Helen was standing there in her police clothes, and the next she was wearing a long, tan, belted coat with a patterned dress underneath it, and (what most surprised Rhiow) a hat that actually had a veil attached. Rhiow was no expert in the ins and outs of ehhif fashion, but she recognized the clothing as well out of date for her own time, if only because Helen was so much more covered than most of the ehhif she saw in New York.

Hwaith looked most surprised.“Nice illusion!” he said. “I can’t even see through it – “

Helen took off the hat, wiped a little sweat off her brow, and replaced the hat again.“Not an illusion,” she said. “It’s a full transform. It costs, yes, but sometimes it’s useful to be able to do one in a hurry.”

“I bet you have to do that a lot back up at our end of things,” Arhu said. “Human wizards have to hide what they’re doing all the time…”

“Most of them do,” Helen said, looking down at herself and brushing at the skirt. “But for me it’s not as much of a problem as it is for most. I keep what I’m doing out of view, sure. But if I need some time off to do an intervention, I just tell my colleagues I’m going off to do some wizardry.” Then she laughed at Rhiow’s expression, and Arhu’s. “No, seriously! They know I’m Native American, and a shaman for my band. So anybody I mention it to thinks I’m just going off to do some New Age thing, with drumming or something.”

Rhiow waved her tail, impressed.“I bet a lot of your fellow ehhif wizards wish they had such a good excuse…”

“I’d take that bet,” Helen said, and grinned. “As for the clothes, though – they’re just me being lazy. I got into the habit when I was working Vice a few years ago. Couldn’t be bothered changing them again and again – especially with the clothes they were giving me: who knew where they’d been? — Anyway, Hwaith, will I fit in? How’s the style look?”

“Good,” Hwaith said. “Very modern.”

“That’s fine: I was shooting for just postwar,” Helen said. “So, as I said, I’ll go have some breakfast, wait for the library to open…see what I can pick up. If we’re going to split up, where should we meet up again afterwards?”

“Back up here, I’d say,” Rhiow said. “Aufwi, if anything gets out of hand up here, call and we’ll come running.”

She turned again to look at the gate, hanging there shimmering innocently in the predawn twilight, for all the world as if there had been nothing wrong with it at all. Yet… “I was told to root here,” Rhiow said under her breath, “’and here I will stay.’”

“Yes,” Hwaith said. He had come up beside her and was looking at the gate with an annoyed expression. “I heard something like that too.”

Which reminds me that there was one more thing I wanted to check.“Cousin,” Rhiow said then, “walk with me a little way?” And she headed uphill, under the shadow of more of the evergreen oaks, toward a lesser crest of the hill they stood on.

Hwaith looked at her oddly for a moment, then followed. Rhiow paused under the last of the trees before the upper hillcrest, and as Hwaith caught up with her, she said, Please, Hwaith, forgive me the familiarity–

It’s not a problem, he said silently. You have to ask: how are my relations with my gate?

She put her whiskers forward. You really do have the Ear, she said. And yes, I do have to ask. For gate management was not just a matter of mechanics, of knowing which string to pull, and when, and how hard. Gates were tremendously complex constructions incorporating the hyperstrings that were the Universe’s building-blocks with hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of words in the Speech which had made the Universe out of those building-blocks. Where such complexities had been sustained for prolonged periods, there was always a question of whether or not the construction incorporating them hadacquired some level of sentience…and many gates acted as if they had. Where there was sentience, or the appearance of it, there was relationship: and sometimes relationships went bad.

Rhiow, I’ve been working with this gate for nearly seventy moons, Hwaith said. It’s never given me more than a moment’s trouble, from the first weeks I spent with it until a few weeks ago when it began to misbehave. And there was no sudden withdrawal of cooperation, no falling-out. He sat down, looked eastward: out there, slowly making itself apparent through the haze over the furthest line of hills, was the Great Tom’s Eye, what ehhif called the Moon, rising now, and half-closed. Just, at the end of the last moon, as the Eye started to go dark, a feeling that the gate’s attention was turning elsewhere. Or being turned. As if it was being increasingly distracted by something besides me and this world…something just out of the field of vision, the thing you feel with your whiskers and can’t see…

She looked at Hwaith, troubled by the trouble in those bronzy eyes. He glanced back, and lashed his tail once or twice, a frustrated gesture. Maybe if I’d called for help sooner, he said, none of this would be happening. Or it would have happened, and have been fixed by now. Have I been acting too much like a tom…?

The question caught Rhiow completely off guard…especially as it was one she couldn’t recall ever having been asked by a tom before: they didn’t tend toward self-analysis nearly as much as queens did. I don’t think so, she said at last. Which leaves us looking at the same problem, I suppose. ‘I was told to stay here.’ Told by whom?

“It’s the question I don’t seem to be able to find an answer to,” Hwaith said, aloud now. “And as you’ve heard, the Whisperer didn’t have one either. I suspect that’s what we’ve got to find out.”

She flicked one ear in unnerved agreement.“It’s when we most want concrete answers from Them that we don’t get any,” Rhiow said. “Annoying. But it’s the world we’ve got, until we fix it…so let’s get busy.”

She got up and shook herself, and saw Urruah coming up the hillside toward them.“’Ruah,” Rhiow said, “let’s take one last – “ Then she stopped: for Urruah had stopped too, and was staring at her. “What?” Rhiow said.

He started cursing under his breath, though in a good-natured way.“I can’t believe I’ve been here for an hour without seeing that!” Urruah said.

She waved her tail, confused.“Seeing what?”

“Look up there!”

Rhiow looked over her shoulder, confused. Dimly to be seen above and beyond her and Hwaith, silhouetted against the slow-growing twilight, a great flat pale oblong shape reared up and caught a very little of the cityglow from beneath them. Urruah seemed quite taken with it, though, and Rhiow had to stare at it for a moment before she recognized it as a squared-off version of the ehhif-English letter“D”. It looked to be in bad shape: the wood of which the letter had been built was streaked with bird droppings and pocked here and there with what looked like bullet holes; its white paint was peeling, and the whole letter leaned backwards against its supporting struts as if considering the virtues of falling down. There were light bulbs all round the letter, outlining it, but most of them were broken, and in any case the power to them seemed to have been switched off.

Rhiow craned her neck a bit to catch a glimpse of more letters like this one, reaching eastward along the ridge of the hill from where they all stood. L A N D, said the ones she could see.“Some kind of advertisement?” she said after a moment. If there was one thing she’d learned about ehhif over time, it was that they would put up an ad anywhere that gravity would allow.

Hwaith made a little trilling noise down in his throat, a feline chuckle.“That’s right. Some ehhif started building a housing development up here a couple of decades ago, and they put these letters up here to show where the houses would go.” He glanced up at the D, waved his tail in amusement. “They were supposed to take it down quite some while back, but they’ve seemed to become too fond of it to get rid of it…or too lazy to bother. I take it they still haven’t done anything about it, uptime?”

Urruah chuckled too.“Oh, they’ve done something,” he said, “but not in terms of getting rid of it.”

Rhiow quirked her tail at him to forestall the inevitable explanation.“’Ruah,” she said, “later for this. Are the others ready to go?”

“Just about.”

“All right,” Rhiow said. “Come on…”

With the two toms following after, Rhiow walked back down to where the gate hovered, now inside the nearly-unseen spherical shell of a boundary wizardry that Aufwi had erected around it. Arhu and Siff’hah and Helen had just finished checking it over with him. “If any ehhif come up here,” Aufwi said to Rhiow as she came up, “they won’t even get close enough to the boundary to bump into it: they’ll just get an urge to steer away.”

“That’s fine,” Rhiow said. “So let’s all get out there and see what we can discover. Take a close look at the other ends of the gate’s roots, see what they’re sunk into, and try to get a sense of why they chose that particular spot. The answer may not be obvious: it might be some transitory phenomenon, or some person or being that’s been in that spot, rather than something inherent in the spot itself. Once you think you’ve worked it out, don’t do anything about the root: we’re all going to have to act together in that regard. But take the time to check the surrounding area carefully. Time’s the issue here, after all. We can’t stay backtime all that long on any one trip: besides the danger of producing nested time paradoxes, it’s just plain bad for the soul, and none of us needs to add temporal wasting to the problems we’ve got already. So make your observations count, and don’t be afraid to bring a little more data back than you strictly think you need.”

Everyone swung their tails or nodded that they understood.“Let’s go, then,” Rhiow said. “Hwaith, is our own goal close enough to walk to?”

“It’s a long walk,” he said, “unless you’re used to that kind of thing.”

She flirted her tail as they all started downhill, making for a path that could be seen down below, among the trees.“I’m a New Yorker,” she said. “I do my forty blocks a day…it shouldn’t be a problem.” As Arhu galloped past her down the hill, she reached out a claw and just managed to snag his tail.

He skidded to a halt before the claw had time to dig in.“You be careful!” Rhiow said.

“Oh, come on, Rhi! We’ve been backtime before!”

“Not this close to our hometime,” Rhiow said. “Little distances between times are more dangerous than big ones. A mistake made way back leaves you lots of successor instants to correct it, and the piled-up error is big and easy to patch. Close in, the effects are a lot more subtle, and fixingthem is sa’Rraah’s own business. So watch what you do – “

“Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on her! Don’t get your tail in a kink!” Arhu said, and galloped on down toward the path.

In his wake came Siff’hah, who threw Rhiow a look of profound annoyance. “And watch your manners when you meet People here,” Rhiow said, though. “None of the edgy stuff like a few minutes ago.” She put her whiskers forward, for it had still been funny. “So disrespectful to a more senior wizard! Jath would be shocked.”

“Please,” Siff’hah said, and laid her whiskers back. “Don’t ‘Jath’ me! Yet another tom. Has it occurred to you how many of them seem to be around at the moment?”

Hwaith glanced around him as if this news came as a surprise, and Rhiow’s whiskers went even further forward. “Oh, you’re okay, Hwaith. But Rhi, did you hear him? ‘I’ll keep an eye on her?’” Siff’hah snorted. “No doubt using the one brain cell he keeps tucked away up his thath and only sticks in his head occasionally for fear he’ll wear it out. Andas for Urruah – “

“Now now,” Rhiow said.

“Oh, he’s all right,” Siff’hah said. “But he’s such a – he’s such a boy!”

“Boys have their uses,” Rhiow said, with a humorous glance at Hwaith. “As we will doubtless hear you saying over and over to anyone who’ll bother listening when you’re next in heat. Meanwhile, the single-brain-celled one is getting ahead of you.” She peered past Siff’hah. “Probably going to fall down that next ravine if someone doesn’t hurry up and keep him out of trouble…”

Siff’hah plunged downhill after her brother. “They’re good kits,” Rhiow said when Siff’hah was safely out of earshot, to judge by the sudden sounds of crunching and thrashing in the toyon and manzanita brush at the bottom of the hill. “A little rambunctious.”

“But extremely powerful,” Hwaith said. “The Whisperer told me their power ratings. You’ve got your hands full.”

Rhiow laughed under her breath.“It’s not just a question of power,” she said. “You should have seen Arhu when he first arrived: all claws and ego – he’d have shredded sa’Rraah’s own ears if he thought she was looking at him the wrong way. And Sif was apparently much the same. They’ve both had a busy time of it,this life: and a hard one. But they’re settling in.”

“It must be interesting working with a team,” Hwaith said, looking over his shoulder to where Urruah and Helen were walking together and chatting.

“It must be interesting working unaffiliated,” Rhiow said. “Aufwi’s been doing it for a long time. And – seventy moons, you said? That’s a good while. But this isn’t a busy gate.”

“No,” Hwaith said. “Historically, San Francisco’s always taken most of the strain – especially bearing in mind the willful way this gate’s always behaved. No one’s relied on it for much.” He glanced back upslope to where Aufwi was minding it. “To tell you the truth, I’d hoped, when I timeslid ahead, that I’d find it’d finally been clouted into some kind of stability.” The look he gave Rhiow as they came down onto the path was rueful. “And that you folks’d be able to tell me how to come back and straighten things out.”

“More likely,” Rhiow said, “what we do back here will enable us to go back ahead and get it straightened out. It’s we who’ll be thanking you.” She peered over the edge of the ground past the path, where the crashing noises of the twins heading downhill were continuing. “Looks like they’re taking a short cut,” Rhiow said, and glanced over her shoulder at Helen, who with Urruah had just come down onto the path behind them

Helen, too, was looking down that way with amusement.“It’s a good thing we weren’t trying to be sneaky or anything,” she said.

Rhiow laughed.“They’ve got the sense to sidle,” she said. “So should we, I suppose: no point in confusing any ehhif we might meet out early walking their dogs.”

“You won’t see much of that up here,” Hwaith said, as they both paused to go invisible, and Urruah came up with them. “Up here in the canyons, most of the dogs are kept in the ehhifs’ houses, or in their yards: they’d be nervous about taking them out, for fear of running into coyotes.”

Urruah chuckled, sidling himself.“Well, neither dogs or coyotes are likely to be a problem for us,” he said, pausing for just a moment to sidle. “But it’s as well to preserve a low profile. What can’t see you, can’t have its eyes looked through by…other interested parties.” He sounded a little disturbed as they made their way along down the path, which began to curve as the hillside did, under the outreaching branches of the gray ghost pines.

“You caught that scent too,” Hwaith said, “did you?”

Urruah’s nose wrinkled. “Something rank,” he said. “Yes. Never got that from a gate before, no matter how badly it was malfunctioning. You notice it, Rhi?”

“I did,” she said. “And it seems to me that it had something to do with what I felt while we were in transit, in the timeslide. That cold feeling…”

“And different from the Lone Power,” Hwaith said, sounding almost upset by this. “You know how it is – how you can almost always hear her laughing, that angry, nasty edge – “

Rhiow had to agree with him. She’d sensed that before, too, and it had been completely missing in whatever had been lurking just beyond the walls of the timespace corridor through which they’d been traveling. As they came to a spot further down the hill where their path met a broader one, graveled, and coming from the right, Rhiow looked over her shoulder and said, “Helen, did you – “

Then her eyes went wide. Helen was not there.

Urruah and Hwaith looked behind them, too, and were surprised.“Where’d she go?” Urruah said. “Did she sidle?”

“We’d have felt it,” Hwaith said. He was right: you usually could feel someone else sidling in the immediate vicinity. But none of them had felt anything – nor, as they looked around, did it seem that she’d used any of the other methods for invisibility available to wizards.

“Boy,” Urruah said, “she really does walk softly. One of those tribal talents, I guess.”

“Well, she knows where to meet us,” Rhiow said. “Come on, let’s get where we’re going…”

The track below them abruptly ceased to be gravel and pine needles and bark chippings, and turned into the place where, on both sides of the sudden, capped-off road, the sidewalk began. To a city Person, this was a strange contrast, eloquent of the difference between city and country. But overhead the live oaks and the peppertrees leaned in over the path, along with the occasional ragged escapee palm up the hillside; and from their quiet predawn murmurings, Rhiow could tell that the road that started where the sidewalk did meant nothing in particular to them. As far as the trees were concerned, these were the hills eternal, as they had been since the Ice retreated, and a little concrete more or less on the ground hardly mattered at all. The Ice had broken it before, and would again: and afterwards, in the fullness of time, the Trees would still be there.

Once the road began, no wider than a Manhattan side street, the houses started too. They were relatively small at first, widely separated bungalows and two-storey houses mostly done in white stucco and tiled roofs. Some of their gardens looked a little ragged, overgrown with wiry-looking ground cover, pachysandra and pinched-looking ice plant. Here and there the ground under the hundred-foot royal palms was untidy with spiky, frayed heaps of their long shed olive-green frond; and scattered palm-fruits, like fat fluorescent-orange marbles, lay squashed on the sidewalks and in the road. Rhiow paused by one palm tree, sniffing.“Rats?” she said. “Up in the trees?”

“Palm rats.” Hwaith cocked an eye up toward the crown of one of the king palms. From up there Rhiow could hear a strange scratchy noise, like her ehhif’s old mechanical alarm clock trying to ring when it wasn’t properly wound up.

“Any sport in those?” Urruah said.

“When they come down, sure,” Hwaith said. “Unless you feel like going up after them. They have a little bit of an advantage up there…”

“But if you skywalked…”

“Yeah, but is that sport?”

Rhiow smiled to herself as they headed further down the canyon, and the sidewalk became wider and cleaner, and the houses bigger, and the driveways broader. It was as if the further down you got from the clear air and the hills’ height, the more important it became to let other ehhif know how important you were – mostly by the size of what you “owned”. This was a behavior Rhiow knew all too well from Manhattan – knowing also how the Earth itself laughed at the concept of ownership, as hilarious to the semi-sentience indwelling in the ancient bedrock as the idea of ehhif selling each other virtual artifacts and “unreal estate” in computer games. In New York, anyway, the Earth had not for many centuries done what it might so easily do – just shrug, and then bear the brief glass-splinter itch as thingsfell down and smashed. Here, though, that’s just what it’s been doing. And indeed she could see, as they walked downhill through wisps of morning mist, the occasional upthrust slabs in the sidewalk and cracks in the stucco and plaster of the houses they passed: the shed tiles that no one had noticed or picked up, the slow rilling trickle from someone’s ultramodern lawn-watering system where a pipe had cracked, and the trickling leak was spinning palm pollen and pine needles down into the gutter. Worse could happen. Worse will happen. Iau, Whisperer, be with us, let us know what we need to know to keep it from happening: in the here and now, and our now and then…

They turned a switchback curve in the road.“What in the Tom’s Name,” Urruah shouted as they came around and saw a huge mist-glamoured vehicle crouching by the curb outside one oversized bungalow, “is that what I think it is? It’s a Hhhu’ssenherh!”

He ran off across the street toward one of the big heavy vehicles, walking around it and staring up at it in a good imitation of awe.“Is this one of your passions too?” Rhiow said to Hwaith.

They both stopped dead as Arhu galloped unheeding past them down the middle of the road at top speed, shortly followed by Siff’hah, who was fluffed up from nose to tail and cursing her brother loudly. “Uh, not particularly,” Hwaith said, after the ruckus had gone by and vanished around the downhill curve. “I guess it’s one of those situations where you don’t really notice something until the tourists come through.” He put his whiskers forward.

“I’ve only seen these in ffhilms,” Urruah said, turning around to spray one of the vehicle’s snow-white tires with great care. “Isn’t it fabulous?”

Rhiow flirted her tail.“If you say so. ‘Ruah, you’re not by any chance doing something that would annoy the ehhif who owns it, are you?”

“Oh, not so anyone would care…” He waltzed back over to Rhiow and Hwaith. “It’ll wash off in the next rain…”

“Hah,” Hwaith said, amused, as he led them on down the hill. “You really are a New Yorker. ‘The next rain’ won’t be until October.”

They ambled further on down the road, and Rhiow noted as they went that the houses seemed to be getting much bigger, the front yards most seriously wider and deeper and more manicured, if occasionally a bit brown; and some of the houses even had two of the big autos in front of them.“You must have good police here,” Rhiow said, glancing into one driveway at the two massive cars there. “You’d think just anybody could steal them, or key them, out here…”

“Steal them?” Hwaith said, sounding shocked. “They wouldn’t get far. The police here are pretty good, for ehhif. And I don’t think there are as many cars now as you folks have uptime…”

Rhiow cocked an ear: the Whisperer slipped a number into it. She blinked.“Three million?” she said. “In the whole state?”

“You’ll believe they’re all right here in the Basin, under your nose,” Hwaith said, sounding rueful, “the first time the inversion layer gets bad.”

“Leaded gas…” Urruah said, waving his tail, looking back at the big cars as they headed on downhill.

Hwaith looked at him with big bronzy eyes, their polite expression nonetheless managing to suggest that Urruah was one whisker short of a full set.“What else would there be?”

“Wait a while,” Urruah said. “Believe me, it gets better. And you just wait till the sushi bars open.”

“What’s sushi?”

Urruah took a deep breath, then let it go as they all paused in the middle of the street where it was crossed by another. The four-way STOP sign might as well have been in the middle of the Mojave for all the traffic there was at this hour of the morning.“Let it be,” Rhiow said. “Hwaith, Herself is very quiet. Have you noticed that?”

“Unusually so,” Hwaith said. “I hate it when She waits for us to tell Her what to do.”

“You and me both, littermate,” Rhiow said.

They wandered across the intersection, and Rhiow caught a sidewise glance from Urruah as he headed across the road to sniff at the base of a peppertree.‘Littermate?’

She gave Urruah his look back with a dead rat on top. Goodness me,‘Ruah, do I detect a note of jealousy?

Of what? Of him? Urruah busied himself spraying the bottom of the royal palm at the corner with an expression of utter abstraction. He’s too skinny for you, Rhi. Plus, you met him, what? Two hours ago?

Fifty years ago, some ways, Rhiow said, angling gently rightward: away down the road, she could see another of those huge blunt round cars coming up the road. He’s a nice young wizard who can use some emotional support, the way things are going around here. Got a problem with that, Dumpster boy? Go pee on another tree.

Urruah gave her an amused look as she and Hwaith stepped up onto the curb. He trotted away from them, across yet another perfectly coiffed emerald-and-jade-striped lawn, to examine a big scraggly bush with bright red flowers that looked like bottlebrushes. Urruah stared up into the tree as they walked past the large pink-stuccoed house it leaned on.“You People have really large bees here!” he said.

“Uh…it’s a hummingbird,” Hwaith said softly, but not in time for Urruah to get out of the way of the furious little bundle of scarlet feathers that came diving at him from higher up in the bottlebrush tree, making a sound like an infuriated cellphone stuck in texting mode.

Urruah went galloping off in a gray-tabby streak into the next yard downhill: the hummingbird, a subdued blood-ruby glint in the early light, went after him at humm factor five, closing fast. Urruah dove head-first into a bed of ivy and vanished.

Rhiow had to stand still for a moment: it was bad for a team leader to be visibly incapacitated by laughter, at least for longer than a breath or three.“City guy,” Hwaith said under his breath. “We get them here. But there are cities, and there are cities.”

“I begin to get that sense,” Rhiow said. They walked another block or so downhill, the equivalent of a Manhattan long block – if the road wound rather more while it made its way down the hillside — while Urruah lost his pursuer, or talked it out of the pursuit, and emerged from a low flat bank of ornamental yew, looking ruffled but (to do him credit) amused.

“Didn’t look like it was much interested in the Formic Word,” Rhiow said, as Urruah joined them in sauntering down the middle of the street again. From behind them and off to the left, where there was more high ground, mist had begun rolling gently down the hillside. It started to slip acrossthe road as they walked, so that shortly they and the big ehhif vehicles by the curbs were hock-or half-wheel-deep in it.

“No,” Urruah said. “My mistake. Can we bring about five million of those things home with us? Think what they’d do to the pigeons!”

Hwaith chuckled.“I wish,” he said. “Our pigeons don’t seem all that impressed. But if you think it’d make a difference…”

They headed downhill, and the yards around the increasingly magnificent houses started to resemble significant portions of Central Park.“It’s not like they use any of this space…” Urruah said.

“But they could.” Hwaith said. “I think that’s the message.”

“Typical ehhif,” Rhiow said. “Prove how important you are by having lots of ground and keeping other ehhif from having it.”

“It’s true,” Hwaith said. He sounded regretful, as they stopped at another intersection. The country around them had flattened out now; above their heads, looking southward, a little spiky-headed forest of palms reared itself against a sky slowly growing violet-blue with the light of the dawnat its back and the reflected light from the unseen sea beneath it. “At least some of them are that way. Not all. The one whose house we’re going to: he’s one of the ones who don’t seem to care. He’s all about ehhif, and not about where they are, if I understand it. And his house is friendly to People.” Hwaith looked up the cross street and down it, like any New Yorker, but with (from Rhiow’s point of view) far less need, for there still wasn’t a car in sight.

“Does one of our People live with him?” Rhiow said as they crossed the wide street.

“Absolutely. She’s such a gossipmonger: there’s nothing happening in these hills, and the businesses around them, that Ssh’iivha doesn’t know. That’s why she’s our first stop.” He paused once more, glancing around him. “Come on; we’ll go in the back way.”

He headed off to the right. As they went, Rhiow saw that each block of the broad clean street had a kind of shadow block behind it; a little blank bare alley with a gutter down the middle of it, to carry runoff water when it rained, and– behind each house – a gate behind which the ribbed metal bins where ehhif put their castoff stuff stood ranked. Here and there such bins stood with their lids askew, but (rather to Rhiow’s surprise) no People were patronizing them. As they walked by the first few gates and bins, Urruah sniffed appreciatively. “High-end stuff in there,” he said. “Smells like Zabar’s.”

You would know better than I would, Rhiow thought, but didn’t say. Hwaith led them past one pair of garbage cans to one high gate in a property’s back wall. It had a hinged People-door cut into it. “Right through here,” Hwaith said, and led the way through.

Rhiow slipped through behind him, followed a second later by Urriah. They found themselves standing at the rear of a back yard as beautifully groomed as the front yards they’d been seeing, but much smaller. Here and there a few lawn chairs stood around on the grass, and a round table with an umbrella and a couple of seats set beside it. Past them was a patio area with potted palms set out at its ends, and on the far side of the patio, a large pink-stuccoed bungalow with high glass doors looking out on the back yard. Between those doors and the smaller back door, under the windows, a row of bowls was set out – about twelve of them, it seemed.

Hwaith led them up to the house.“If it’s been a while since you’ve had a snack,” Hwaith said, “feel free to tuck in. That’s what they’re out here for.”

Urruah walked among them, inhaling appreciatively.“Can you smell this stuff?” he said under his breath. “No coloring agents! No preservatives! No weird chemical agents with numbers instead of names! No vegetable additives snuck in by confused animal activists! No vhai’d rice or ‘roughage’ — nothing but meat! All kinds of meat!” He looked briefly confused. “And now that I think of it…what kind of meat is that I’m smelling in this stuff?”

“Probably mink,” said an amused voice from off to one side. “After they make coats out of them, what’s left over winds up in the canned People-food….”

From around the corner of the house, along a walkway that probably ran to the front yard, came a Person. She was, as People reckoned such things, extremely beautiful in an exotic way: white-furred, fluffy, and a bit plump, with small, well-set ears and vividly green eyes. Nor was she one of those flat-faced, inbred People whom ehhif have inflicted on the worlds over time, but a long-nosed, gracious-looking Person, with a look of courtesy and intelligence about her to go with the beauty. Rhiow didn’t bother glancing back at Urruah to see his reaction: she could already hear him doting on this pretty new apparition.

“Hunt’s luck, Hwaith,” the newcomer said. “Long time no smell!” They breathed breaths briefly.

“Got some visitors in, Ssh’iivha,” Hwaith said. “They’re hunting news, and I knew just where to bring them.”

“News we’ve got,” Ssh’iivha said. “More of it than I know what to do with. Hunters, you’re welcome! Luck to you all. Come on in, get comfortable. Names or not as you like…”

“Names, of course,” Rhiow said, coming forward to breathe breaths with their hostess. “I’m Rhiow. And thanks for your welcome! We’ve come a long way on our business: we’re on errantry, and we greet you – “

“Oh, I knew that,” Ssh’iivha said; “anyone could see you’re wizards, just by looking at you. You’ve got Hwaith’s look.” Behind her, Rhiow could just hear Urruah’s comment on that: fortunately it was well submerged in the levels of private thoughtspeech to which another nonwizardlyPerson would not be privy. “Whatever brings you here, you’re welcome.”

“Is it all right for us to be here?” Rhiow said as Urruah went to greet Ssh’iivha. “It won’t make trouble for you with your ehhif?”

“Oh no!” Ssh’iivha said, and laughed. “He likes People: that’s why he’s left all this food around. Everyone comes here to visit the Buffet, and swap news. This is a regular clearing house for Our Kind’s gossip, all up and down these hills. Which is doubtless why you’re here.” She gave Hwaith an affectionate look, and at the sight of it Rhiow felt a strange pang she didn’t know how to classify. But then how many nonwizardly People am I close to at home? she thought. Just Yafv, really. And just to say hello to in the mornings, when I pass him on his stoop, fresh from his latest rat. It must be nice to be part of a mixed community…

“It’s an unusual ehhif you’ve got,” Rhiow said, “who’s willing to make so many of us welcome when they don’t actually live with him.”

“That’s true enough,” Ssh’iivha said. “But he’s something of a loner, and I think we’re company for him without needing to get into emotional involvement. You know how some ehhif are…afraid to get too close. Anyway, if you’re sure you’re not hungry, come on in…”

Ssh’iivha led them in through another People-door, this one built into the normal ehhif back door. “If I may ask,” Urruah said, glancing around him as they came through the big white-tiled kitchen full of huge, stocky, retro-looking appliances, “is ‘Ssh’iivha’ a real name or a nickname?”

Rhiow’s whiskers went forward a little: it was the kind of question a tom might ask of a queen he was getting interested in. “Well, actually it’s both,” Ssh’iivha said. “My ehhif uses it too, or a word that sounds a lot like it. Used it, I should say.”

They came out into the living room. It was handsome, airy, but spare. It was high-ceilinged, wooden-floored, white-walled, and sparse of furniture– suggesting that the ehhif who lived there was either in transit, didn’t consider furniture all that important, or took pleasure in taunting the ehhif around him with his own opinion that their surroundings were too cluttered. Here and there, on one or another of the low white sofas, some Person slept: here a brown tabby, there a white shorthair with his feet in the air. “If you want to take a while to relax,” Ssh’iivha said, “this is the place for you. The neighbors make no trouble: my ehhif makes everything right with them. So we try to keep things right with him. No mating in the back yard, no yelling, no fighting with the neighbors’ People; this is a no-heuwwaff zone.”

“Oh,” Urruah said, sounding slightly disappointed. Rhiow had to fight to keep her whiskers from going too far forward, as mating, yelling and fighting with other toms were probably Urruah’s three favorite things besides wizardry.

Ssh’iivha jumped up on a spare couch and stretched out: Hwaith went up after her, and Rhiow followed, while Urruah stalked around a little examining more of the room, particularly a massive desk over by one of the windows that looked out into the back yard, flanked on both sides with full bookshelves and a couple of occasional tables piled with more books. “You say,” Rhiow said, “that your ehhif ‘used’ your name. But he doesn’t use it now?”

“Oh, yes,” Ssh’iivha said, “just not out loud, these days. It seems silly to think it’s a coincidence: I suspect he can hear us a little, though he probably doesn’t think of it that way. And he talks to us as if he thinks we can hear, which is considerate for an ehhif.”

“But he doesn’t speak out loud….” Urruah said. He was up on the desk now, peering at the complex-looking black-and-gold machine on the top of it.

“No,” Ssh’iivha said. “There’s something the matter with his throat. If he has something to say to other ehhif, he has to write it down on a piece of paper and give it to them. We can just barely hear him whisper, but other ehhif can’t hear him at all.” Ssh’iivha waved her tail, sadly, slowly. “He wasn’t always like this. A while after I came to live with him, his voice started to get hoarse. Finally he went off where ehhif go to be healed, the hhohs’hihal: and he came home seeming well enough, but without his voice. So now all our People call him Eth’ehhif, the SilentMan, when they visit.”

“I tried to have a look at him to see what was going on with his throat,” Hwaith said, sounding a little embarrassed, “but I couldn’t get far. I’m not really much good at healing: I specialize in spatial constructs, mostly. And he’s spiky, Rhiow: a real tom. You try to get friendly withhim, and if he didn’t start the process himself, he wonders what you’re up to, he holds you away….”

Rhiow waved her own tail, trying to maintain her composure. The words“the hhohs’hihal” had brought the fur up on her against her will. She could still see her poor Hhu’ha’s discarded body lying there on a steel slab, not inconsiderately treated, but nonetheless terribly empty of the soul that had so often used that flesh to pick her up and cuddle her and make rude-for-ehhif noises against her belly — an entirely undignified process for a Person, and one without which the world was now all too dry and empty a place. “We’ll look into it while we’re here, if you like,” Rhiow said, commanding herself to some kind of calm. “We’ve got some other things to look into as well, but if we cross his path we’ll certainly try to see if he needs some kind of assistance that we can offer him. Are you expecting him soon?”

“It’s hard to say,” Ssh’iivha said. “He works our hours, truly: he’s almost more one of us than one of them. Out from sunset to a bit past dawn, usually: then he comes home, makes notes of what he’s seen and where he’s been, and after a drink of something, falls over. He’s in the Business, you see. He sleeps the day away…then, a while before sunset, he gets up and dresses himself and goes out again.”

“’The Business?’” Rhiow said. “Which one?”

“He makes dreams,” Ssh’iivha said. Hheivvhwei was the Ailurin word she used, a common one for fiction, as opposed to fwaiwei, “news”, a story that was known or supposed to have really happened.

Urruah jumped down from the desk and wandered back over to them.“He’s working with one of the ss’huhios?” he said.

“That’s right,” Ssh’iivha said. She looked over at Hwaith. “It’s the place that has the lion as its symbol: don’t ask me the name of it – they’ve changed that about three times in the last few years. He’s just finished work on a ffhilm for them. It’s based on one of the stories he told for one of the hviih-sh’ethh, the papers-that-speak-silently.”

“A magazine,” Urruah said. “Interesting.”

“But I heard from one of the other People who come through here, Hhaiivuh his name is, he’s a mouser at one of the other ss’huhios, that the eth’Ehhif was lucky to finish work on that ffhilm when he did.” Ssh’iivha’s eyes went wide with the expression of a Person plunging happily intothe latest gossip. “Apparently that big earthquake the other day did a lot of damage at the ss’huhio: some gas connection or something went wrong in the fake-street where they’d been making the ffhilm, and half the backlot burned down. There were even a couple of ehhif killed. The police and the ehhif who put out fires were all over the place for days. And even now that they’ve gone, everyone’s schedules over there are in shreds, it seems…”

“The earthquakes,” Hwaith said, “they’re part of what’s brought us here. But I hadn’t heard that anyone had been killed!”

“Oh yes,” said Ssh’iivha. “And here’s a curiosity for you! The ehhif who died in the fire weren’t even ss’huhio people, Hhaiivuh said. They were [insert Ailurin term here] ehhif – “ she used the word for “stray” that many People used to express the human-English term “homeless” – “and no one’s sure how they got into the backlot, or why they didn’t get out when the fire started. Because it didn’t start suddenly: it took a long time to get going, Hhaiivuh said. Maybe too long.” Ssh’iivha flicked on ear back in a bemused gesture. “Hhaiivuh told me that there’s a rumor going around that the fire wasn’t really caused by the earthquake at all, but started on purpose – “

From out at the front of the house came a sudden noise: a car door slamming.“Oh,” Ssh’iivha said, “he’s home early today. Anyway, Hhaiivuh told me that another of the hunters over there, Fehwau, said he’d been over in that part of the backlot earlier in the day and hadn’t smelled anybody who shouldn’t have been there. He said, Why would homeless ehhif have been there except to sleep? It didn’t make sense that they would have been there so late in the day, because the fire started at about noon, right when that earthquake happened – “

A key turned in the front door, and it opened. The ehhif who came in was extremely well-dressed: three-piece suit in dove grey, expensive-looking silvery silk tie, fedora just a shade of grey darker, shoes to match. He wasn’t a tall man, and was rather pale and slightly built; but to Rhiow’s way of thinking, that wasn’t something you’d notice much once you’d seen his eyes. They were piercing and cool behind the silvery wire-rimmed glasses: the expression could doubtless be rather intimidating, by ehhif standards, depending on what the rest of his face was doing.

He paused there as he shut the door, and glanced around at the various other People lounging about the place, and Ssh’iivha and Urruah and Rhiow and Hwaith. Seeing them all, he nodded, his expression seeming to say that all this was fine with him; and he slipped out of his jacket, draping it carefully over one of the white couches. “Half a moment,” Ssh’iivha said, “the gossip’ll keep,” and she jumped down from the couch to run over to him.

She rubbed against the ehhif’s leg, purring, and he bent down and stroked her, then picked Ssh’iivha up and cuddled her. Awwww, Urruah said silently as she reached a paw up to touch the ehhif’s cheek.

The ehhif’s mouth moved. Hey there, Miss Sheba, he said, and to Rhiow’s astonishment, not a whisper, not a murmur, came out of him as he said it. Had a good night out. Looks like you and your buddies’ve been doing the same.

He put Ssh’iivha down and went to the back door, glancing out at it, apparently to check the state of the food bowls. Then he went to the icebox, got himself a seltzer bottle, spritzed himself a glass full of it, and went over to the typewriter.

The ehhif sat down, reached down into a drawer of the desk, pulled out a sheet of paper, and rolled it into the machine with such speed and ease that it was plain this was something he’d done so many hundreds of thousands of times that he didn’t even need to think about it any more. And then he was typing, fast, with two fingers.

“You see how nice he is,” Ssh’iivha said as she wandered back to the couch and jumped up on it again. “I had no idea that there were ehhif so nice until I came to him.”

“You had another one before?” Rhiow said.

Ssh’iivha scrubbed briefly at one ear, turning it inside out and then rightside in again. “Sa’Rraah sends us these things to test us,” she said. “Oh, Hahr’rena was very beautiful. And very famous, as ehhif judge things: she’s been in a lot of ffhilmss. And she meant well: she was kind enough, when she thought to be. But she’s not very good with People. Sort of an unconscious type, always full of her own dramas and troubles, but never one to depend on for keeping food in the bowl.” Ssh’iivha opened those green eyes wide in a vexed expression. “I can’t tell you how many times I had to walk two blocks from home in BelAir to get a drink out of someone’s fountain or fishpond because she’d forgotten to fill the water dish. I was mortified. All the other ffhilm-ehhifs’ People looking out the window at me as if I was some kind of stray…! Well, finally she met the Silent One here, and ‘gave’ me to him. And was I glad to go!” Ssh’iivha’s tail lashed a little.

Behind them, the typing was going on at full speed: a piece of paper was pulled out of the typewriter, and another one was pulled out of the drawer and inserted and the typing began again, with hardly a second’s break. “He’s a good provider, then,” Rhiow said.

“Absolutely. The house here, the apartment in New York — Oh yes,” Ssh’iivha said, seeing Rhiow’s whiskers go forward, “I thought I heard the accent. Yes, we do well enough. He has a housekeeper who watches this place while we’re not here: the Buffet is on whether we’re here or not. He and I, we go back and forth between the coasts together. Not as often as we used to since before he lost his voice, but…”

Urruah had been watching the rapid-fire typing with increasing curiosity.“Rhi,” he said, “do you need me right now?”

She flicked one ear“no”. Urruah jumped off the couch and padded over to the desk, glancing up at it. “Don’t go in the drawer!” Ssh’iivha said: “he’s fanatical about that. Very organized. And don’t get too close to the left elbow: the speed it moves when he hits the thing that makes the carriage go back over, he’ll knock you halfway into next week, and then spend an hour apologizing.”

Urruah leaped up carefully onto the desk and balanced there on the edge of it, looking at what the ehhif was typing. The ehhif spared him no more than a glance, just enough to make sure that Urruah wasn’t going to disarrange anything or get in the way. You just stay there, fella, he said, and don’t get in the paper drawer – And then he went back to his typing.

“Ssh’iivha,” Rhiow said softly, “forgive him: he’s such a snoop. And a bit besotted with ehhif culture. He’s far better than the rest of my team at reading their writing, even without the Speech to help him: it’s become a hobby. Back home he’s endlessly translating their posters andads, whether we want to know what they’re about or not – “

“And menus, I suspect,” Hwaith said, with a sly grin.

Rhiow’s whiskers went forward. “Au, cousin, you have no idea,” she said. “The foods he’s gotten me interested that it was far better I didn’t know about…” She looked back over at Ssh’iivha. “But forgive me: you were telling us about the fire that started when the earthquake hit – “

“Well, it’s all a bit strange, isn’t it?” Ssh’iivha said. “Those poor homeless ehhif – They do get into the backlot, over some wall, or through some freight gate that’s open a few minutes longer than it should be. There’s so much of the lot, they can easily move from place to place and avoid the ss’huhio’s own security people. Not us, though. There must be a hundred People working on the Lion’s backlot, and it’s impossible for us not to be able to tell what ehhif have been where, and when, and for how long. And in the case of those poor strays, you know how they smell – “

“I do,” Rhiow said. “I have a few under my care, back home.”

Behind them, the typewriter went ding! one more time, a page was ripped out, another was rolled in.“He’s so fast,” Rhiow said.

“You have no idea,” said Ssh’iivha. “You should see him when he really gets going. He’ll be doing that hour on hour, never gets up, never looks away from the machine. I worry about him sometimes, but there’s no stopping him: besides listening to other ehhif talk, it seems to be his life.” She let out a slightly sad breath.

“And there’s not another ehhif for him?” Rhiow said.

Ssh’iivha looked pensive. “No,” she said, “not for a while now. Not the one he wants, anyway – “

“Rhi?”

She looked up. At the desk, the silent ehhif was still typing away, but Urruah was gazing down at the the page he’d just taken out of the typewriter. He glanced up at Rhiow. “You need to see this,” he said: and he sounded alarmed.

Rhiow gave Ssh’iivha a bemused look. “I’m assuming this isn’t just some attack of fannishness,” she said. “Excuse me a second– “

She leapt up quietly onto an empty spot in the bookshelf to the right of the desk, so as not to upset the ehhif, and looked over his shoulder. He was still rattling away at top speed.“Amazing how fast one of them can work with only two toes,” she said. Her own Iaehh worked the same way, but at no speed anything like this. “So what am I supposed to be seeing?”

“That last page,” Urruah said. “No, wait a second – “

He looked at the three pieces of paper to the right of the typewriter. Rhiow felt, under her skin, the small wizardry Urruah was doing. The barest breeze moved through the room, easily mistakable for a random draft; and at the same time the topmost piece of paper slid smoothly to the side so that Rhiow could see the one under it.

“Very slick,” she said, squinting at the paper. “What am I looking for, exactly?” And her tail lashed a little. “This is just so strange…” For she was much more used to Iaehh’s laptop now, and the ehhif letters that burned up clear and sharp onto the shining page, than this strange mechanical way of putting one’s thoughts into fixed form with little hammers and an inked ribbon. Yet at the same time there was that strange, retro feeling of mass and solidity about all this, the same feel one got from the cars in front of the houses and the huge stoves in the kitchen: somethingtriumphant, a victory of intention over resistant matter. Not a wizardly mindset at all, indeed something very ehhif-ish – but you had to admire it all the same.

“Look through my eyes,” Urruah said. “It’s faster.”

She purred at his courtesy, crouched herself down compactly on the bookshelf, let her eyes go unfocused, and did the small twist and knot of wizardry that for a moment would let her share Urruah’s eyes. It always took a moment for her to synch in, for toms do not see the world the same way queens do: nearly everything has an additional edge, being judged as either enemy or potential conquest. But Urruah was both tom and wizard, and therefore knew that some things, like ehhif print, wereessentially neutral in content if not context. Rhiow squinted her eyes a little, as any Person does to see more clearly, and read on the first paper:

It is a night like any other, except that this is Hollywood Boulevard, and on the Boulevard there is no such thing here as a night like any other, as they are all different while pretending to be the same.

There is a bar on Hollywood Boulevard in the Hotel of the same name, and there the citizens and denizens of the area congregate at all hours that the L.A.P.D. allows them; which in the case of the Boulevard Bar means six AM to five AM, that hour being when they mop the floor and chuck out the denizens who are unconscious or no longer able to pay their tab— this latter category being something that must be judged nightly by Tough Therese who minds the cash register, and that on a case by case basis. It is at about four-thirty AM, therefore, that someone sitting at the bar begins to hear the many and entertaining variations on the theme of helping someone else pay their tab for them. But there is also something else that sometimes happens then, and it involves the backwash from four AM, which is when sick people are known to die and crazy people are likely to become the craziest, always depending of course on what the Moon is doing.

Rhiow shook her head until her ears rattled, trying to keep her“eyes” in Urruah’s head as she did so. “What is this?” she said. “Fiction or news?”

“It’s hard to tell with them sometimes,” Urruah said, “especially when they get into magic realism. I think maybe this is an early practitioner – “

Rhiow wanted to start banging her head into some friendly yielding surface, or whack Urruah upside the head, or both. For her“magic” and “realism” were parts of the same continuum: but Urruah seemed to be describing some kind of strange ehhif literary fad rather than the simple truth. Nonetheless – it being a simpler and possibly kinder response than just getting down out of the bookcase, walking across the back of the ehhif’s chair and hitting Urruah very hard between the ears — for the moment Rhiow just kept reading:

Now it is held as a matter of fact among the residents and clients of the bar in the Hollywood Hotel that there is a place in the middle of the great North American continent where crazy people roll across to and then mostly get stuck. It is the Continental Divide, and east of it reside the people who are pretty much sane, and in Denver reside all the people who are only sort of half crazy and having hit the Divide can go no further. But the truly nutso folk roll right over the Donner Pass and down into Nevada and Oregon and Washington and so on, but most especially into California, where there is just something that attracts them, maybe the San Andreas Fault, and the crazier they are the further they go, and the very craziest wind up in Los Angeles: and the most select of those crazies are in Hollywood.

Rhiow looked over at Urruah again, more bemused than before. He simply shook his own head, and his own not-inconsiderable ears flapped as if in a gale.“Read it,” he said.

She bent her head to the page again, glancing over when it was finished to the next one—

Now even among the Hollywood set some of the crazy people stand out, and these are mostly the ones who arrive from Pennsylvania, or Transylvania, or some other vania, with an eye to relieving the locals of their hard earned dosh. There is much of this commodity available in Hollywood, for it is a locality rich in film industry types who have acquired great heaps of the necessary along the way, and who love to be seen to fling their moolauw about the landscape in various and sundry directions, thus theoretically proving that they are worth more than the cost of the clothes they stand up in, which can be considerable. Fancy jewelry much with gold and diamonds the size of California walnuts are nothing to these swells, as are mansions the size of the Grand Central Terminal, which is very grand indeed, and therefore many of the crazies, especially those who are crazy in the manner of the fox, have hit on the conceit that all the simooleans possessed by these industry swells are no good to them, for (say the crazy-as-a-fox types) they have no inner beauty, which is to say the beauty of the soul. And these foxy types get busy selling inner beauty and meditation and strange old religions and stranger new religions to these movie people, and relieving them during the process of vast wads of cash, which is of course supposedly worthless anyway, so that this is obviously what the LAPD would normally call a victimless crime.

Now a bunch of us are sitting around the bar very late in the Hollywood Hotel: and the bunch consists of Mike the Mick, who is the doorman and opens the door for those rich swells who forget how their arm muscles operate any time they approach a portal in a place where other mortals may see them: and also in attendance is Kip the Cyp, who is not from Greece but from the island where Aphrodite rose from the waves, and so is big on handling other exotic foreign bundles that have been dumped into the water by guys with speedboats and then come bobbing to the surface again before the coppers get there and notice their provenance. And also there is Shady Harry who owns the bootleg bar out back of Max Factor’s: and with him is Dora, who is a shapely blonde and Shady Harry’s companion, and a very highly paid companion at that, one who shops at Robinsons all the day and has tea there with the Hat Ladies in the Palm Room upstairs and would not be seen on the Boulevard except in a big black car with adriver, or a guy with a bankroll the size of the big black car. And while we are sitting nursing our various beverages in the dim of the night, which is most excellently silent for the most part, suddenly out of this silence rises a great howling noise like someone who has had a few slugs put into them, though not in the lung, otherwise they would sound much more like they were gargling.

“Now who may that be?” says Shady Harry, as Miss Dora turns a very light shade of pale for someone of her comely ancestry.

Mike the Mick merely nods in a knowing fashion.“It is a nutjob or head case,” he says, “who we call the Lady in Black. She is a frail who has been coming down Laurel Canyon every month or so in this weather. She has acquired this monicker as she always wears black, and very high-end black at that, so that we think she is bankrolled by some unattentive guy up Laurel. And two weeks after the moon is full, which you cannot miss because of the noise of the other crazies who inhabit these environs, she comes down the Boulevard and commences to save our souls, whether we recollect having mislaid them or not. It is interesting timing,” says Mike the Mick, “since most of our other crazies prefer the Moon to be full. You cannot stir out of doors without hitting them in such weather.”

“I think it is some kind of marketing ploy,” says Kip the Cyp, who in real life is an accountant and knows more than somewhat about ways to get and keep the cabbage, as many studios employ him in this capacity. And since Kip has an adding machine where his heart should be, this is a smart move on the studios’ part. “I think,” says Kip, “that the Lady in Black has spotted a hole in her competition’s advertising strategy and is exploiting it.” And indeed she is exploiting it out in the middle of the Boulevard for all the market will bear, which at this hour of the morning is a considerable amount.

Since it is 3 AM and there is little other entertainment to be had such an hour except the numbers game that Georgio the Wop is running behind Delmonicos, which is nothing to do with New York’s Delmonicos but does not mind being mistaken for it, such is the wicked world we live in, the bunch of us go out through the fine polished brass revolving door of the Hollywood Hotel, the first such door on the West Coast, and make our way out onto the sidewalk of the Boulevard, which is very quiet this time of night, the dice games all having retired out behind the Grauman’s Chinese. And out there in the midst of the boulevard, where few vehicles pass at such an hour, the Lady in Black comes wandering down from where Laurel Canyon crosses the Boulevard, and she is dressed far more likea babe who has just come out of one of those night clubs downtown than any normal type of god-botherer, as such folks are more usually dressed like performers in the band than like the thrush who stands up in front of the mike and sings. The Lady in Black is walking down the middle of the white line in the middle of the street like someone doing a drunk test, but as she gets closer it can be seen that there is nothing drunk about the way she is walking, and as all the while she looks neither to left nor right or at anything in particular, as far as we can see.

The Lady in Black is making the aforesaid yowling noise like some kind of upset animal, and then she stops that noise at the same time she stops in front of the Hollywood Hotel, and she turns toward us, but like someone who sees nothing: and she says very loudly,“You are all doomed.”

“This is the usual routine,” says Mike the Mick under his breath. “She has a rant about not being friends with someone.”

“You are not the friends of the Great Old One,” she says, “and so when he comes, he will not be kind to you as he will be to his friends, who will be granted the gift of swift oblivion, but you will suddenly take leave of your bodies and your unhoused souls will writhe in torment through aeons uncounted and you will wish that you had been friends of the Devourer of Worlds, but it will be too late for you.”

“And now she will tell us the price of admission to being this Devourer guy’s friends,” says Mike the Mick in my ear, “and it will be retail, not wholesale.”

“For now at last comes the hour of the day, and the day of the year, and the year of the aeon of the Black Leopard,” says or rather shouts the Lady in Black, “and of that aeon there will be no ending, and the sheaf of sheaves of worlds will be torn open by His teeth and gulped down in His maw, and all lesser dominations even unto the God of the gods will be cast out into the houseless void, and cease to be.”

One more page came out of the typewriter and went down onto the desk, and another page was rolled in, and the machine-gun-fast typing started again. As it came down and the last words vanished under the new page, Rhiow heard something she had never heard before, and hoped never to hear again: the Whisperer yowling low in Her throat, in great and increasing distress.

The fur bristling all over her, Rhiow craned her neck to look down at the new page. Hwaith leapt up onto the bookshelf beside her. Did you hear that? Rhiow said silently, to both him and Urruah.

Hwaith’s eyes were as wide as Urruah’s were. Yes, Hwaith said: and, I wish I hadn’t, said Urruah.

“This is unusual,” says Mike the Mick. “She has not yet offered to save our souls. That is usually the blowoff that follows such a pitch.”

“For the sacrifice has been made in full, though mindlessly,” says the doll in black, as a big Ford goes by her and she pays it not a red cent’s worth of mind. “And mindfully it is made now, three times three; and the Black Leopard receives it, and the end time is set in train. Exult then, fanged ones, exult in the hour of night when the prophecy is at last made real, and the worthless worlds are made an end of, and the Black One gorges Himself full on the corpse that is all Life.”

And she walks on by us, right down that white line, and pauses at the intersection of Hollywood and Highland and then hangs a left and vanishes around the corner of the hotel. And we stand there being quiet, since though we are all always being told that we are doomed, it rarely gets done quite like this.

“Now there is a lady who is minus at least one banana from the bunch,” says Kip the Cyp.

“The City ought to do something,” says Miss Dora. “What are we paying our taxes for?”

And they all go back inside through the beautiful brass rotating door of the Hollywood Hotel, with Mike the Mick and myself being the last ones to go.“It is strange that she did not try to charge us the usual rate,” says Mike the Mick, “which always involves some kind of meeting up in the rich part of the hills and a great forking over of cash.”

“Now where is she gone to?” I say.

“Let us go see,” says Mike the Mick. “But I do not think we will see much.”

We go up to the corner of Hollywood and Highland, and as we go it commences to rain, which is a peculiar thing out of what seems like a clear sky, but then with the lights as bright as they are on Hollywood Boulevard these days, it is often hard to tell what is going on up in the aether. And when we look up Highland, there is no sign of her.

“For a doll dressed like that she moves fast,” I say to Mike the Mick.

“This I have seen before,” says Mike. “But there is never anyone there to pick her up in a car, and I sometimes think she must slip into one of the apartment buildings up Highland, but there is no sign of her doing so, and no one up there seems to know about her, for once or twice when I havea slow lunch hour I go up there to ask a few questions, and no one shows any sign of having been bought off, which I would surely detect by now.”

So we head back in the direction of the Hollywood Hotel, and Mike the Mick says,“I have seen the Lady in Black three months running now, and I do not know whether I should buy some more umbrellas when I see her, or throw them away.” Because as we walk back up the Boulevard, the street where it was raining is now as dry as any number of bones.

Now we have plenty of ghosts here but none of them can dry the street up after a rain, and I wonder whether the City should try to procure her services in the flood season. Yet if the Lady in Black is in fact producing the rain, then a joe with a smart head could use her to make a lot of moolah out of the LA County Flood Control Board. But no one can catch her long enough to figure out which side she should be working for, or against, which is annoying and also too much like life.

The Silent Man stopped typing, and stared at the paper.

Rhiow looked at Hwaith.“I thought you said it wasn’t going to rain until October,” Urruah said.

Hwaith shrugged his tail.“Poetic license,” he said. “Anyway, it didn’t rain last night. At least, not anywhere else…”

Rhiow was beyond being all that concerned about the weather. She was bristling still, and still hearing the silent distress of Hrau’f the Silent, of one of the Powers that Be, over something long-dreaded, half-expected, now coming terribly true. In the meantime, the Silent Man had stopped typing, and was staring at the half-finished page in the typewriter. I hate it when these things don’t have an obvious ending… Rhiow heard him think.

Then Rhiow stepped down onto the Silent Man’s desk, because now – however bizarre it seemed – she understood what she needed to do. She sat down by the right side of the typewriter, and stared at him until he felt the weight of her regard and looked her in the eye.

“Cousin,” she said in the Speech, “I am on errantry, and in the Queen’s name, I greet you. Now let’s talk business.”

And the Silent Man didn’t move an inch except that his eyebrows went right up.

The Big Meow: Chapter Five

You don’t look English, the Silent Man said.

Rhiow threw a glance at Urruah.“Did I miss something?” she said.

Urruah tilted his head to one side, looking thoughtful. But before he could say anything, the Silent Man said, We’ve got a lot of Brits around here. They’re real big on the Queen.

“Ah,” Rhiow said. “I take your meaning now.” She purred, slightly amused. “You mean the queen-ehhif whose territory includes London. No, sorry, not that Queen. We have one of our own, who is of…for the moment, let’s just say a higher order.”

Those very cool eyes rested on Rhiow for a moment, and the Silent Man’s hand went off to one side, as if searching for something that wasn’t there. Then he very visibly brought the hand back to rest in front of the typewriter, and put the other hand down on top of it, as if intent on keeping the first one where it was.

“Am I meant to understand,” Rhiow said, trying not to sound too threatening about it, “that you have no problem with the idea that a cat might be able to speak?”

Oh, on the contrary, the Silent Man said, I’m thinking that this all probably has something to do with the medication. They keep telling me they’re sure they’ve got the dosage right now; but every time they say that, I get some strange new side effect. He gave Rhiow a rather cockeyed look, though again it had that cool, assessing quality to it. I’ll grant you, though, this side effect’s a lot stranger than some. And I usually don’t get them this late in my day…

“I’ve been called a lot of things in my time,” Urruah said in the Speech, “but never a side effect.”

The Silent Man looked at him. One talking cat, he said, might have been an accident. Two starts to look like a coincidence–

“And three would be enemy action?” Urruah said. I wonder, he added silently for Rhiow’s benefit, should we tell him that’s what we’re here about…?

I wouldn’t rush that, ‘Ruah. Look at him – he’s a bit on the brittle side, at the moment. And tired. Let the simplest part sink in first.

The Silent Man laughed, just a barely audible hissing sound. And a smart guy, too, he said to Urruah. Okay, you’re making the case for ‘hallucination’ a whole lot stronger now…

“I’m sorry if all this strains your sense of your grasp on reality,” Rhiow said, “but sometimes, to keep that reality in good order, such interventions become necessary.” She glanced at the page in the typewriter. “It would seem that you’ve seen something unusual: something that may have a bearing on the reason we’ve come here.”

The Silent Man leaned back in his wooden typing chair, so that it rocked back a little on its base. He looked from Rhiow to Urruah and back again, and shook his head. I seem to be seeing a lot of unusual today, he said, and rubbed his face with both hands. As he let them fall, for a moment a look of great weariness and pain showed in his eyes: but a second later it had been so completely sealed over that Rhiow wondered for a second whether she had really seen it. So let me get this straight. Cats can talk…

“Some cats can talk to humans, or ehhif as we call them,” Rhiow said. “Yes.”

“But only when our business specifically requires it,” Urruah said, “as it does now.”

Okay. But how come my cat doesn’t talk to me?

“She doesn’t know the Speech,” Urruah said. “She speaks Ailurin, like most cats do.”

The Silent Man looked unblinkingly at Urruah. There are two secret cat languages? he said. Oh, come on, now, that’s one too many. What a shame: I was starting to believe you weren’t the drugs talking…

Urruah’s tail had begun to lash; but Rhiow was amused. “One of the languages is no secret,” she said. “Humans can learn some Ailurin if they’re patient and attentive. Sheba says you know a little of it. The other language, you don’t need to learn. Everything recognizes it: and it’s not justa cat language. It’s the language in which everything was made. Not all cats know it, though – not even most of them.”

“The way most of the humans you’d meet here don’t speak Italian,” Urruah said.

The Silent Man gave Urruah a dry look. You’d be surprised how many of the humans I deal with speak Italian, he said. But let it pass. He looked back over at Rhiow again. The expression was strange. So what’s all this about?

“There are some strange things happening in your city at the moment…” Rhiow said.

The Silent Man gave her a look. Blackie, he said, this is Hollywood. If strange things didn’t happen here, I’d worry.

Hwaith snickered. The Silent Man threw him a look. And you, he said. You I’ve seen here before, but you never talked to me.

“It wasn’t allowed,” Hwaith said. “Now it is.”

“What we read about in your writing there – “ Urruah said. “That would be one of the things we’re looking into.”

Why? said the Silent Man.

Rhiow tucked herself down into what her ehhif usually referred to as“meatloaf” mode. “The explanation may take some time,” she said, “and I have to suggest that you may think it’s something to do with your medication again, as many aspects of it are going to sound bizarre.”

He smiled again. All right, he said. One thing’s for sure: my medication doesn’t refer to itself as often as you do. And the other things you’re looking into – what would those be?

Rhiow threw Urruah a look. Keep it simple! she said silently.

“The earthquakes,” Urruah said.

At this the Silent Man actually threw his head back and laughed, though again he produced no sound but a kind of hiss. Rhiow thought of the hissing way Ith laughed, and again nearly bristled, but for a different reason: humans weren’t meant to laugh so. Earthquakes! the Silent Man said, rubbing his eyes again as he recovered his composure a little. They’re just like the weather, aren’t they? Everybody talks about them, but nobody does anything about them…because nobody can. But now here you folks come along, and say you can do something. What do you do?

“It’s more in the line of prevention than direct intervention, as a rule,” Rhiow said. “Quakes are difficult to stop outright. Also, like forest fires, they have their own reasons for happening – so trying to forestall them too long can be unwise. But the ones you’ve been having lately aren’t natural. We think they may be connected to something else we’re investigating at the moment.”

I suppose, the Quiet Man said, that it might strain my present credulity too far to inquire what that might be.

“Maybe we should leave that alone for the moment,” Urruah said.

Rhiow looked thoughtfully at the Silent Man.“Let’s just say,” she said, “that some of the earthquakes that have occurred recently have a kind of connection to certain places in the city: not merely a physical one. We’re in the process of investigating some of those connections, and the spots to which they’re attached. One of themis quite near here.” She looked over at Hwaith.

“Within a couple of blocks,” Hwaith said. “Just south of Sunset, near Beverly and Crescent – “

The Silent Man nodded: though the look he gave them all was a little odd.“And there are several other locations,” Rhiow said, “that we’re going to go have a look at as well. This one was closest; our colleague Hwaith here suggested that we should stop with you first to get the news. And now I see,” and she threw a sidewise glance at Hwaith, “that the choice was wise.”

So let me see if I’ve got all this straight, the Silent Man said. What we have here is a secret organization of talking cats dedicated to stopping earthquakes…

Rhiow looked up into the Silent Man’s face, amused: for he wasn’t speaking in mockery. And it was surprising to be looked at with such quick acceptance of her intelligence by an ehhif who was not also a wizard; and not just acceptance, but humor — although the humor was not only dry, but a bit chilly. This was a creature who did not waste time denying reality. Once he had accepted it, he got on with business. But then, Rhiow thought, if I’m any judge, this Silent Man has had entirely too much reality to deal with over the past few years. That look of pain on his face was familiar: she’d seen it in Iaehh’s face too often of late. I must find out more about what’s the matter with him. If he’s going to be of help to us, the least we can do is return the favor.

“I’d say our remit goes a little further than just earthquakes,” Rhiow said. “Nor does the organization consist only of cats. We and numerous other species, including your own, work together to keeping this world in one piece.”

I’d say your organization’s had a close call, the last few years, the Silent Man said.

“I’d say you were right,” Rhiow said. “Many of our people were involved. Many died, trying to prevent what almost happened…and didn’t. We’re busy with that job again; or still. But the scale is considerably larger.”

Larger than the Second World War? said the Silent Man.…But then, what was it she said? ‘The sheaf of the sheaves of worlds?’ Drunks and crazies repeat themselves, sometimes. But the Lady in Black didn’t look drunk. And crazy… He shook his head. Crazy covers a lot of ground. Especially in this town. His eyes glinted with cynicism. Around hereno one notices your crazy much, if your wallet’s fat enough. And there are fat wallets in plenty.

“That’s another issue,” Hwaith said. “Cults…”

We’ve got enough of those around here, the Silent Man said. … and I’d be the wrong man to ask why. Lots of people smarter than me have to have been asking themselves that question for years now. Maybe it’s just — He leaned back in his chair, waving his hands in the air in the first really casual gesture that Rhiow had seen him make since he walked in the door. This is California, after all. The Gold Rush mentality has never really died. People come here from every place where things aren’t working to get away, start over, leave old lives behind. And then when they get here, they start to find out how lonely that is. He folded his arms, leaning back further. Or they fail… and then they go looking for friends. After a while, somebody tells them about this great place they’ve found, this temple or churchlet or secret club, where people tell you how to act, what to do to have everything come out right. The lost and failed and frightened are glad to find a place like that. Soon enough they start thinking that person who runs that place is something special. Maybe not even quite human…

The Silent Man smiled. It was a surprisingly grim look. And then the person in whom the poor patsies have placed all this trust starts pulling the strings. He or she starts getting them to do things they’d never otherwise have done. Hand over everything they own, their houses and the contents of their bank accounts. Desert their husband or wife and marry somebody they’re told to. Give up their children to be raised by someone else, according to someone’s ‘holy word’. And then, while they’re not looking, the compassionate and enlightened leader of the Ultimate Tabernacle of Divine Confusion runs off to Rio with a carpetbag full of his poor dumb disciples’ money.

“Maybe,” Urruah said, “such people — the victims, anyway — are just looking for meaning in their lives.” He flicked a glance at Rhiow, not having to say aloud what she knew he was thinking; that it was hard on a species not have any clear sense of whether or not the One existed. To be sure, there were People who didn’t believe in Queen Iau, but not many; a far more common reaction for holders of the feline worldview was simply to have no time for Her. Independence ran deep in the feline psyche, sometimes enough so that a given Person might feel her or his essential felinity was best expressed by denying the authority of Deity — if necessary, to Her face. There were numerous stories among People of the Queen dealing kindly, even humorously, with such free thinkers…knowing them to be intent on being true to themselves and their nature. But such defiance was not an optionthat would’ve been open to Rhiow; it would have been an essential denial of a command structure that she had long accepted.

In a world full of death and pain, the Silent Man said, a world full of lies and corruption and theft and cruelty, where good people get cheated and bad people prosper, can you blame them?

“Hardly,” Hwaith said. “Nonetheless, despite how well they might mean, such innocents can still do great harm if they’re led into it. Or misled.”

“Which brings us to your Lady in Black,” Rhiow said. “Your friend had seen her often before. But no one tried to follow her before? No one had tried before to find where she’d come from?”

If they tried, the Silent Man said, my sources didn’t mention it.

“I think we should find out,” Hwaith said.

Rhiow lashed her tail.“I concur. The things she spoke of – “ She flicked an ear at Urruah. “There are some troubling implications.”

What, you mean besides the destruction of the‘sheaf of sheaves of worlds?’

Urruah laughed under his breath at the ehhif’s dessicated humor. “You wrote that your companion said she’d been seen three months running – “

That’s right. Always a couple weeks after the full moon.

“In other words,” Hwaith said, “when the moon’s dark.” She gave Rhiow a thoughtful sidewise look.

Rhiow’s tail lashed. Moondark was not an unequivocally dangerous time; but when the Tom’s Eye was most tightly shut, there was a tendency for the darker influences to scurry about and make themselves noticed, like rats scratching and running inside the walls of the world. And for straightforwardly natural reasons, the new moon’s one of the nodes of the month that favor earthquakes…

“You said that she was yowling,” Urruah said.

The Silent Man nodded. Godawful noise, he said. Kind of like a cat. No offense.

“None taken,” Rhiow said. “And then no sooner had she delivered her message than she went around the corner and simply vanished.”

That’s the way it looked.

Rhiow flicked an ear backward, then forward, considering.“There’s a place we need to visit as well, then,” she said. “We may be able to throw some light on where she came from, or where she went.”

She sat up.“Perhaps we might make your home our base for a short time while we conduct our investigations?” Rhiow said. “Sheba’s told us the ground rules: we won’t seem different to your neighbors from any of the other People who visit you here. And we won’t overtax your hospitality.” Will we, ‘Ruah?

Urruah half-closed his eyes and let his glance wander sidewise. Officially this was“strategic aversion”, a gesture of agreement or conciliation to a more senior or dominant Person in a pride. But Rhiow noted in combined amusement and annoyance that the direction in which Urruah’s eyes slid included the food dishes out on the terrace…which turned the gesture into more whatan ehhif would have thought of as an eyeroll.

The Silent Man naturally noticed nothing of this. You kidding? he said. I’d prefer you stayed. That way I can test whether you’re still so voluble when I’m off the pills. Hang around just as long as you like.

“One thing, though,” Hwaith said. “The writing you just did – Cousin, would it be intruding to ask what your interest in the story is?”

You mean, besides seeing it happen in front of me? The Silent Man stretched, leaned back in the chair again and folded his arms. This town is all about surfaces, he said. And light. The light of day, and what shows when the flashbulbs pop. When something pokes through a surface– or else only puts in an appearance at night, when the light’s poor, and the things come out that can’t stand daylight or publicity – then that attracts my attention. It’s been that way for me for a long time now, and maybe it’s a bad habit. But it’s a hard one to break, this late inthe day.

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 keep 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 peoplesitting 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 ofterraces 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 body 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…

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Siffha’h said, and closed her eyes.

A sudden odd silence fell over the intersection as all the cars’ electrical systems failed in unison, for perhaps a mile in every direction.

The silence didn’t last more than a few moments: all around the traffic lights, drivers started getting out of their cars, pulling the vehicles’ hoods open, staring into the complex innards in complete bemusement, and (in some cases) exercising their vocabularies most creatively. But Arhu paid them no mind. Inmid-intersection, he sat himself down, curled his tail around his toes, and stared in an unfocused-looking way at the cracked concrete there.

Rhiow didn’t have anything of the Eye herself, but to a watching wizard, the influences involved in its use could obscurely be glimpsed. For a few seconds, the imagery of previous hours whirled around Arhu as he felt about with his mind for the specific moments of past time that were needed. He overshot a bit at first. Filmy cars seemed to run over or through him at high speed, gauzy pedestrians jittered back and forth in the background; the memories of recent days and nights alternately spotlighted or shadowed Arhu. He didn’t move, not even his tail twitching, as the imagery faded, went unchangingly dark around him. And then he looked up, gazing down Hollywood Boulevard.

“There,” Arhu said.

They watched her come, moving through and past the brief here-and-now traffic jam as if it wasn’t there: but then again, last night, it hadn’t been. Down the white line she came, exactly as described. The revenant was a thin, pale apparition in the broad sunlight of day, and hard to see; but there was no mistaking her. She was tall and elegantly dressed and empty-eyed, walking with a stately and icy precision, her eyes seeming fixed on some goal that the people around her had given up their right to see. The expression of cold-set scorn on the queen-ehhif’s face, and the feeling of revulsion and rejection that flowed from her, gave Rhiow a chill down her back.

She glanced up and saw with some surprise that the Silent Man’s eyes were fixed, not on Arhu or the traffic jam, but the remembered vision of the night before. But then he was here, Rhiow thought. That alone could make it possible for him to see an induced recurrence.

Possibly feeling Rhiow’s regard on him, the Silent Man glanced down at her. That’s a good trick, he said.

“We’ll see if it’s going to be good enough,” Rhiow said. Closer and closer the vision came, straight down the white line, walking right through one of the live ehhif who was standing with his hands on his hips and staring at his stalled car in disgust. He got an odd look, that ehhif, and heshivered all over: in the mid-morning warmth, he took off his hat and mopped his brow as if suddenly sweating cold.

On the Lady in Black came, and stepped out into the intersection. Another second or three and she would walk right through Arhu. But he looked up, catching her eyes with his: and in mid-step she froze where she was.

In that instant the vision went sharp, clear and dark. Around her the pavement went black and wet; beyond her, night and streetlights could be seen. Rhiow didn’t move, for fear of distracting Arhu. But she looked closely at the Lady in Black. As ehhif went, Rhiow suspected that this particular queen would be considered extremely beautiful. Yet there was also something strange about her, a sense that the physical form she wore was as relatively unimportant as some item of clothing.

Rhiow looked harder, as Arhu was doing. He had gotten up now and stretched himself, and was walking around the queen-ehhif. Perhaps Rhiow caught a touch of his examination more directly, now, for as she looked at the ehhif’s shape, inside it, only half-seen, some odd force seemed to twist and writhe. What’s going on there? Rhiow wondered, her ears starting to go back. It’s as if –

She’s not really there? Arhu said silently, pausing to look up at the woman-shape from behind. He was bristling, the hair on his back all spiked up, and his tail was starting to fluff. Good guess. No scent, Rhi. She’s a shell. She’s been soulsplit.

Rhiow growled softly in her throat, angry and unnerved to have her and Hwaith’s suspicions independently confirmed. A few ways did exist to denature a body’s connection to its soul while the body was still living – not exactly a severance, but the next best thing, exempting the soul from passing along the consequences of its actions to the body in which it belonged. All these methods were dangerous, and except under very specific circumstances, all of them were illegal for wizards to use, either on other beings or on themselves. There were, of course, some ways besides wizardry to produce the same effects. Either way, the hapless practitioners tended not to stayalive long enough to spread information about the techniques very widely. But where soulsplitting was being employed, there were also usually other closely affiliated abuses of power to be found: and all of them were favorite tools of Sa’rr?hh’s, when the Lone One thought she could trick some poor mortal creature into using them.

Is her body still alive, do you think? Hwaith said.

Don’t know, Arhu said. She sure doesn’t care. This soul’s completely taken up with thoughts of what she’s warning us poor bystanders about. His tail was lashing. And she’s enjoying the thoughts, let me tell you. She really hates everyone and everything here, and she just can’t wait to see this whole state fall right off into the Pacific.

Rhiow hardly found that surprising. Many beings who underwent soulsplitting did so because they thought that liberating the soul from the body while still scheduled to be alive would allow them access to some“higher”, purer, less emotion-dominated state of being. But all too often matters went the other way entirely, usually because the creature initiating the split didn’t fully understand the deeper reaches of the relationship between soul and body — the way the physical side of existence acted as a check on the less safe or sane urges of a spirit still connected, however tenuously, to physical timeflow and its consequences. Arhu, Rhiow said, is it safe to query her? For us, and for her connection to her body? Whatever state that might be in…

Arhu walked back around in front of the Lady in Black, watching her closely, and sat down again. I’m holding this revenance out of the timeflow for the moment, he said. It’s probably safe enough to ask her a few questions. But I can’t keep Seeing her this way for long: and even if I could, it might not be smart. Something else is watching her too, Rhi. Whatever it is, it’s inside time, and shouldn’t have any perception of this frozen moment. But I’d rather not press my luck.

All right. Ask her: who is the Great Old One?

Arhu said nothing aloud, merely looked at the queen-ehhif’s apparition. She spoke no word in response, moved not at all. But at a long chilly remove, as if it were being bounced back through several stages of some immaterial relay, the answer came: He is the one from outside, older than all Gods: their inverse, dwelling in the Void. He is the darkness before any word, and the silence into which all words spoken must die. He is the End.

Rhiow licked her nose. Urruah, now sitting by her, looked out at Arhu. Ask her, Urruah said, who is the Black Leopard?

Another long silence: longer this time, Rhiow thought. He is Tepeyollotl Night-Eater, Lord of the Beasts of the Dark, the answer came back, who is called into time to devour all things: and to the darkness beyond time and timelessness he will return when all is devoured. He is the Herald of the End.

Rhiow and Urruah looked at each other. Each of them could feel the Whisperer, silent for the moment, listening through their ears and minds: and they could feel the tension in Her as if it were their own.

Rhi, Arhu said, can you feel something in this neighborhood watching this? Not that close by. Not actually taking an interest as yet. But it might–

Urruah looked out at the intersection, his tail waving slowly from side to side, his ears down. Ask her, what is the meaning of the sacrifice that has been made?

An even longer pause this time. It is the opening of the way into the realities that are fouled with life. It is life spilled out to enable the entry of the Great Old One into the worlds he will rule and destroy. It is the beginning of the End.

Rhiow stared at Urruah, the fur going up on her back…as, on some other level of reality, the Whisperer’s was doing. And Hwaith, standing by Rhiow and Urruah now, looked out at Arhu. Ask her, he said: where did you die?

Rhiow looked at Hwaith in shock. And this time there was no delay whatever in the answer. I have not died. I can never die! Yet I am done with the world of bodies, one with the Black One forever, safe in His darkness! It was almost a shout of triumph, the first answer holding any passion that this image of the Lady in Black had produced. Yet– was there fear in that voice, too?

— and beneath it, so faint that Rhiow’s ears twitched forward as if to hear it better, a faint desperate cry like the mewl of a kitten trapped down a sewer: Laurel –

And the fur abruptly stood up all over Arhu. That’s enough! he said, hurriedly backing away from the Lady in Black. On the instant, the rainy night that had seemed to cling about her was gone. She was a ghost again, pale in the hot sunlight, and moving again, walking down the centerline of Hollywood Boulevard, past them, around the corner, and up Highland past the Silent Man’s blue car. And then she was gone.

Arhu made his way back to the sidewalk and sat down there, still sidled. He started washing, and it was very much the composure-washing of someone eager to put himself to rights before their ehhif guest could see him.

What happened there? Hwaith said.

Arhu paused in his washing and shook his head as if someone had clouted him upside the ear. Whatever was listening…all of a sudden started listening a whole lot harder. If it’d heard much more, it could have realized who was looking at it, and from when. Not something we want anyone to know right now, I’d think.

He was unnerved. Rhiow put her head down, bumped heads with him, though she was unsure how much reassurance she could truly offer Arhu in a situation like this: she was unnerved enough herself. You did right, she said. There’s another spot we need to look at, down the street: but it can wait a little.

No, Arhu said. No, I’m all right. He shook his head hard, so that his ears rattled: when he looked up, a little of the normal insouciance was back.

This soulsplit, Hwaith said. How long ago would you say it happened?

Arhu’s tail twitched with uncertainty. Hard to say. That soul could last have been in a body as long as…two, maybe three weeks back –

Around the time the earthquakes started, perhaps? Hwaith said.

Arhu looked at him thoughtfully. Could be, said Arhu. It’ll take a little more checking to find out. We’ll need to go back up the hill and have another look at that spot where the gate’s trying to root. I didn’t have any idea, the first time, that we were going to find this connection…

Rhiow sat down by Siffha’h and tried to keep her own bristling under control. Wonderful, she thought. Another problem we didn’t need. For now the question arose: had the Lady in Black invoked this unsavory state of existence of her own free will, or had she had it wished on her? If she had, she had to be helped out ofit. If the soulsplit had been her own idea, she still had to be offered the opportunity to remake the choice. Assuming her body isn’t already quietly decomposing somewhere up in the hills, Rhiow thought, or being digested inside any number of coyotes. Why in Iau’s name do ehhif seem so eager todo this kind of thing to themselves?…

Meanwhile, here they all stood in the sunshine, with the ehhif of the past going about their business in their fat solid shining cars, and in the big red trolleys that passed by with a cheerful clangor of bells when pedestrians threatened to get in their way, or some auto turned across an intersection in a trolley’s path. The fronds on the palm trees off to their right rustled and glinted in the sun, and everything nonetheless seemed very unreal… especially with the direct experience of the Whisperer’s unease just a few minutes before. Rhiow let out a long breath. “Come on,” she said to Arhu, “get yourself unsidled: we’ve got to work out what to do next. Siffha’h – “

Siffha’h glanced down the road. Barely a second later, one of the engines in one of the cars some ways back in the traffic jam turned over. Other drivers, noticing, got back into their cars; within moments, more and more engines were revving all up and down the road.

Siffha’h got up then, stretched, and turned and walked away from the intersection. Behind her, the lights changed to green, and gradually traffic on Hollywood Boulevard started moving again. Behind one of the palm trees, Arhu came out of invisibility and wandered out to join the others.

The Silent Man watched him as Siffha’h went over to bump noses with him. So would someone tell me what that was all about? he said.

Rhiow was trying to figure out just how to do that, and how much to tell.“Half a moment,” she said. “I still have to finish debriefing our two youngsters. Was there somewhere else we were going first?”

Down by the Chinese– that other address you were interested in. It’s only a block or so.

“Let’s head down there, then,” Rhiow said.

They walked down Hollywood Boulevard, past the frontage of the hotel. It was a pleasant stroll in the sunshine, and amusing enough because of the ehhif they passed, who looked with utter fascination, sometimes with laughter, at the procession: the little man in dapper gray with a white cat riding on his shoulder, surrounded by a bodyguard of four more– the gray tabby in the lead, two black cats and a small white calico-patched tom strolling on either side of him, and another calico-patched white bringing up the rear. Cars on the Boulevard, having been sitting still for the better part of fifteen minutes, now actually slowed down again to watch them all pass by. Rhiow flirted her tail in wry comment as they made their way along the Hollywood Hotel’s palm-lined front terraces. To Arhu she said, Now tell me: what did you find up by Laurel and Highland Trail that left you so on edge?

The gate’s sunk a root there, all right, Arhu said, silent. But not deep: not yet. He sounded unusually grim.

Then what’s the trouble?

Someone died there, Rhi. An ehhif. Not long ago.

Siffha’h came up alongside her twin and put her tail over his back as they walked. The gate-root was tunneling straight down into where that life spilled, she said, sure as a seedling drilling down for water.

Spilled? Rhiow said. Actual bloodshed?

Siffha’h wrinkled her nose in disgust and distress. No question. A Person with no nose could have smelled it.

And a Person with the Eye, Arhu said, could see it.

That explained Arhu’s grimness well enough. Nearly murdered with his littermates when hardly more than a few weeks old, Arhu’s relationship with death was a thorny one, and probably would be for some lives yet: that kind of trauma could take a good while to move through. And —

Laurel, Rhiow said. She said“Laurel” —

Arhu looked at her, both angry and confused. No, he said. No matter what she says, I’m not sure the Lady in Black is really dead. And anyway, she’s not the one I saw killed.

Rhiow stared at him. Are you sure?

The Eye doesn’t lie: not when it’s looking back. Forward’s another story. The dead ehhif up on Laurel was a tom… But he still looked confused. Trouble is, Rhi…what we all saw, just now, still smells to me of that death up the hill.

They all walked on to the next intersection, where the sidewalk bent around a gardeny area marking the end of the hotel’s property. I could make the predictable joke about tongues, said the Silent Man, glancing down Orchid Street to see if any traffic was coming. But you’d probably thank me not to. What did Patches here find?

“We think,” Rhiow said, “perhaps a murder.”

Is that so.

Rhiow looked up in surprise at the sudden intense interest in the Silent Man’s voice. His eyes were on her, and they were suddenly much more alert than they had been.

“It’s early to tell, yet,” Urruah said from where he’d fallen in beside Rhiow. “Always a mistake to start theorizing before you’ve finished examining the evidence carefully….”

The Silent Man smiled. Another student of the Master, he said. Well, this makes the spot we’re about to visit a little more interesting.

“Why?” Rhiow said.

But the Silent Man just shook his head as they crossed Orchid. Rhiow wasn’t given much time to press the issue, for as they came up onto the curb of the far corner, Urruah stood stock still for a moment at something he saw…then broke into a run. Tourists and business people and casual strollers on that sidewalk looked with surprise or amusement at the big gray tabbythat ran helter-skelter down among them, stopping in front of what seemed from this end of the street to be some kind of big empty plaza. Urruah stood staring into that space as intently as if it were some kind of delicatessen.

The Silent Man glanced down at Rhiow, a wry look. Tell me he’s a film fan, he said, in the tone of an ehhif now prepared to believe just about anything.

“There are a fair number of us,” Hwaith said. “More than you might suspect…”

The Silent Man reached up to rub Sheba behind the ears as they walked after Urruah. Now why in the world would you be interested in the movies?

“Because we appreciate a good story as much as you do,” Hwaith said. “Even when it’s full of all that boring human stuff.”

The Silent Man looked just briefly nonplussed. And the glance Hwaith threw Rhiow then was so wicked that, despite her concerned mood, she still had to stifle a laugh. She was still working at retaining her composure by the time they all caught up with Urruah, or rather, with the spot where he had been standing.

There before them lay a wide space filled with strange differently-colored patches of concrete. Curved walls decorated with fanciful-looking flowery sculptures embraced this forecourt on either side, ending in two archways peaked with odd prickly-topped towers; each was sheathed in greened copper, and flared up into peculiar spiky crowns. At the rear of the concrete-filled plaza were bronze doors guarded by a couple of huge statues of what Rhiow at first took to be houiff— though there was something leonine about them as well, so that she was strangely reminded of the statues of Hhu’au and Sef outside the New York Public Library. Above the doors, done on a huge plaque of gray stone, was a massive curling carving of some kind of fireworm; and above it all, borneup on coral-colored columns, rose yet another high sloping copper roof with yet more spiky ironmongery cornices at the corners.

Rhiow looked around for Urruah, expecting to see him amongst the ehhif tourists, dawdling among the footprints he’d told her about earlier. But he was out of sight.

“Sidled,” Hwaith said over her shoulder. He was right: a moment later, Rhiow caught sight of Urruah under one of the huge dog-beasts, the one on the left-hand side of the doors. He had his head down, sniffing at the concrete, and his striped tail jerked once or twice as if in distaste. Then Urruah straightened, sneezed, and turned to walk back to the waiting group.

“Blood,” Urruah said to Rhiow, and looked up thoughtfully at the Silent Man. “Ehhif blood. Absolutely no mistaking it.”

The Silent Man nodded slowly. About two weeks ago, he said. It was the middle of the night when they found the body. The management were keen to cover it up. They were worried it’d be bad for business.

“Two weeks would match the dating on the merely physical scent,” Urruah said. He looked at Arhu.

Arhu, though, had his ears back in what for him was a rather uneasy expression: and he looked over at Rhiow.“Rhi, I’d rather not do an in-depth search here right now. I’d be nervous that whatever was starting to pay attention to me a few minutes ago might have more of its attention drawn here. That could make trouble for us later.”

“And he’s tired,” Siffha’h said, and bristled at Urruah. “Leave it till later.”

“Wait a minute, I’m not that tired! It’s just that – “

Siffha’h cuffed Arhu in the head, claws in. “Don’t give me that! Didn’t you just tell me that – “

“Never mind what I told you, would you just stop mommying me?”

“It’s not mommying to – “

The yowling, quiet as it was, was beginning to draw amused looks from some of the ehhif around.“Arhu,” Rhiow said. “Sif. Enough.”

Fortunately they knew that tone of voice, and stopped. Both of them immediately sat down and started washing, though in different directions.

Maybe we need a break, the Silent Man said. I promised you folks lunch. How about it, babe? He reached up again to rub Sheba behind the ears.

Sheba reached out and patted his cheek with one paw.“Did he just say the food word?” she said. “Tell him we should go to the place with the wooden back room and the table with the window!”

Rhiow passed this on. The Silent Man grinned. She’s got taste, he said. Let’s go back the way we came. It’s a few blocks further on: we don’t need the car.

He led the way at a brisk walk: and all the People fell in behind him at a trot, amused by the attention of the ehhif they passed, but refusing to acknowledge it. Rhiow, behind the Silent Man, glanced over at Urruah as he caught up with her.“Don’t say it,” he said.

“What?”

“I was fanboying.”

“For the ten seconds you spent over it,” Rhiow said, “not Aaurh Herself could have chastised you. So I was hardly going to start.” She glanced down Orchid as they crossed it and made their way past the Hollywood Hotel again. “Besides, I felt sorry for you.”

He looked at her in surprise.“What? Why?”

“Well, the circumstances weren’t exactly optimal, were they? The first time you see this place in the flesh, and you have to be all business? You’d have liked to get right down and roll around on that concrete, all over those famous ehhifs’ pawprints. Don’t deny it.”

His whiskers were twitching.“Well…” he said.

Hwaith had come up on Rhiow’s other side: he glanced over at Urruah. “When we’ve got our business sorted out,” he said, “we’ll come back here and I’ll introduce you to the backstage crowd.” He put his whiskers forward. “And the queens.”

Urruah gave him a sidelong look.“Thought I caught a few ladies’ scents up front…”

Rhiow walked a little slower and let the two toms drift ahead together to talk shop: though she didn’t miss the glance Hwaith threw her way as she dropped back. A nice young tom, she thought, mulling over again what he’d mentioned about the loss of his mentor. I guess I see why he might have seemed a little nervous to start with…especially with the circumstances being, again, not exactly optimal. But he’s working in all right. She paused, as the others did, at the corner of Highland and Hollywood: in front of them, as Siffha’h’s tail flirted idly, the lights changed with near-unseemly haste.

Across the road they started passing more normal-looking buildings than the concrete-forecourted theater and the histrionic hotel. Shops and stores, the occasional granite-faced bank; and then suddenly, without warning, the smell of roasted meat occurred as they came up to a wooden storefront with square-paned windows. Rhiow’s mouth began to water as the Silent Man opened the door and held it for the People to walk in.

I will not run, I will not run, Rhiow thought: but she didn’t loiter, either. Inside the door it was very dark and cool, compared to the rapidly warming day outside: and everything smelled of meat, and fish, and smoke. The floor was of wood, and all the walls were paneled, with rows of tables and benches covered in red leather, and a counter down the right-hand side. Just in front of where the Silent Man stood was a wooden podium, and behind it stood a tall balding ehhif in a suit.

“And who’s this functionary?” Rhiow said.

“It’s a maitre d’,” Urruah said. “He tells the ehhif where to sit.”

The ehhif’s expression didn’t look like that of anyone who seemed about to issue orders, though, once he set eyes on the Silent Man. “Well, good afternoon, Mr. Runyon!” the maitre d’ said. “And the lovely Miss Sheba as well. So nice to have you.”

“It’s so nice to be recognized,” Sheba said to the others, over the Silent Man’s back. “Once they get to know you here they’re very good. Wait till you see – “

“—But we don’t often have the pleasure for seating you for lunch,” said the maitre d’: “it’s just as well you got here early. Would you prefer to be at the counter today, or your usual table?”

The Silent Man shook his head, reached into his pocket and came out with a small notepad and pen. On the pad he scribbled something quickly, held it up. Rhiow craned her neck to see.

GOT MORE COMPANY TODAY. SIDE TABLE BACK ROOM?

The maitre d’ peered to either side of the Silent Man, briefly confused. Down by his feet, though, Rhiow looked up and said, just loudly enough to attract an ehhif’s attention, “Meow.”

The maitre d’ looked down in great surprise at Rhiow – then saw, behind her, Urruah and Hwaith and Arhu and Siffha’h, all sitting around the Silent Man’s feet, looking absently in various directions and wearing the universal expression of bored people waiting in line.

“Well, my goodness,” the maitre d’ said. “This would possibly be Miss Sheba’s fan club?”

The Silent Man grinned, scribbled on the pad again, ripped the page, held it up. VISITING TALENT FROM OUT OF TOWN. GOT ENOUGH CHAIRS?

The maitre d’ allowed himself a slight smile as the door behind them opened. “I’m certain we can manage. How many menus?”

“Is there room for one more?” came a female voice from behind them.

The Silent Man turned, and his eyes widened slightly. So did those of the maitre d’.

In through the restaurant door came undulating a tall slender figure in red, her raven hair coiled up loosely under a wide-brimmed red hat that slouched down over one eye. Rhiow, catching the other eye, put her whiskers forward, then glanced up at the maitre d’ and the Silent Man as the lady in red paused before the maitre d’s podium.

“Rrrrrrowrrrr,” Urruah said, amused, and not particularly under his breath.

Ewwwwww! Arhu said silently. Interspecies stuff! You are beyond perverse.

“I’m so sorry to be late,” Helen said to the Silent Man, “but I took a wrong turn on the way here.” From those dark eyes, Helen gave the maitre d’ a look that could have been described as “smoldering” if it hadn’t been so amused.

The Silent Man glanced down at Rhiow. Without moving his lips, he said, Are you going to tell me that this lady’s in your organization too?

“Yes,” Rhiow said, amused.

Where do I join? he said. The Silent Man’s eyes went back to Helen again: he held his hand out, smiling.

“Since you’re helping us,” Rhiow said, “I think possibly you’ve joined already.”

Helen took his hand.“Helen Walks Softly,” she said.

And carries a big stick, I bet, the Silent Man said as he shook Helen’s hand.

“Normally,” Helen said in a demure whisper, “a gun. But I’m not packing today.”

A gun, huh, said the Silent Man. Funny. You smell like a cop. But they don’t give lady cops guns in this town.

Helen didn’t even blink. “There are other places where a lady can be a cop,” she said: which was true enough, if a misdirection. “As for how I smell, I guess you missed the ‘Evening in Paris.’”

A slow grin spread over the Silent Man’s face. Come on, doll, he said, as the maitre d’ left his podium and headed for the back of the restaurant.

They passed through the front room, followed by the unavoidable stares and laughter of the ehhif already seated there– though Rhiow noted that as many of the stares, interested or envious or sometimes both, were directed toward Helen’s dark good looks as toward the trail of cats behind the Silent Man. In his wake, they all walked into a secondary room with an arched and painted ceiling covered with autumnal outdoor scenes. A bar ran down the right side of this room, and more tables along the left side: and about halfway down was a door into a third room, smaller and more shadowy than either of the first two.

The maitre d’, Helen and the Silent Man went through. This room was as darkly wood-panelled as the others, but was also, to Rhiow’s surprise, nearly full – the front of the restaurant had still been half empty. And the tables were almost entirely occupied by men, most of whom looked up with great interest as Helen walked in behind the maitre d’. Helen gave them all the kind of gracious, cool look that visiting royalty might have bestowed on a crowd of visiting lackeys, and then turned her attention to the table where the maitre d’ had pulled out a chair for her.

It was an excellent spot for them: round, with one side of the table edged into a lace-curtained bay window that looked out into an unassuming back yard space, more a service area than a patio. The window had a high window seat cushioned in red leather: perfect for ehhif children, or People. Urruah and Hwaith leapt up and seated themselves next to Sheba as she jumped down from the Silent Man’s shoulder onto the window seat. Siffha’h and Arhu jumped up next to them. Rhiow leapt onto the window seat’s far side, closest to Helen: and on Helen’s other side, the Silent Man seated himself with his back to the rest of the room, where no one else could see whether he was moving his mouth or not.

“I take it,” Helen said, “that back here, the press won’t be too much in the way?”

The Silent Man smiled at the sound of a question that might as logically have come from some publicity-shy starlet. He put his pad down, scribbled on it briefly by way of camouflage, while saying silently, I wouldn’t worry about it. There’s nobody back here but writers.

Helen smiled, laughing softly. Across the table, Urruah looked over the Silent Man’s arm as he opened the menu. “Steak,” he said. “Liver. Salmon. Brook trout…” Rhiow looked away, eager not to see him actually drool.

“Your usual, sir?” said the maitre d’.

The Silent Man nodded. The maitre d’ turned to Helen. “A glass of wine, perhaps,” she said.

“And for Miss Sheba and her friends? Cream, perhaps? Or is it too early in the day?”

Rhiow was hard put not to laugh out loud.“Cream all around,” Helen said, “by all means.” She smiled at the Silent Man. “Would you like me to handle the orders for the other side of the table?”

The Silent Man nodded, smiled.

The maitre d’ took himself away. Urruah was purring already. “I foresee a very interesting afternoon…” he said.

It’s already been a fairly interesting morning, the Silent Man said. Visited one murder site and had hints about two more.

“Well,” Helen said, “I’ve just come from the live files section at the LAPD.” She was using the Speech now, but in such a way that no one in the room but the People and the Silent Man could hear her. “If we’re discussing the same two murders – the ones at the Chinese, and the one upat Laurel and Highland Trail — then they have something unusual in common with six others that have taken place in the last month.”

Six others? said the Silent Man. Since when does this town have eight murders in a month?

“Since now. And every one of the bodies, when found,” Helen said, “had had its heart cut out.”

Coffee arrived for the Silent Man: he ignored it. Saucers of cream were placed in front of all the People: they paid them no mind, staring at Helen. Helen bestowed a brooding look on the glass of wine that had been brought for her: it was red, like blood.

“Cheers,” Helen said.

The Big Meow: Chapter Six

The light in the back room shifted and mellowed as lunchtime passed; the writers at the other tables drank their cocktails, packed up their briefcases and bookbags and went away: and still the People and the Silent Man and Helen Walks Softly sat and talked, the Silent Man scribbling on his pad every now and then for the sake of appearances. There had been much more cream after the initial shock wore off, and some more wine, and finally some lunch. The food had been wonderful, but Rhiow, watching the restrained and regretful way in which Urruah was washing his face after the meal, could see that he hadn’t had the inclination to do the kind of justice to his raw liver that he’d originally intended. She felt sorry for him again…but once more, she had to admit that they all had a lot more to think about at the moment than food.

Helen lifted her second glass of wine as the Silent Man drank about half his fifth cup of coffee at a gulp.“You should really cut back on that,” she said. “It’s going to make a mess of your nerves.”

They’re a mess already, the Silent Man said. And this beats the alternative. But he put the cup down. Look, I could use a map of this, and a timeline. It’s been too much bad news at once.

Helen nodded and started moving plates and glasses around on the table, and pushed off to one side the gloves she’d shed when the food arrived.

“Six more murders,” Arhu said. “And all ‘unaffiliated’ ehhif, out-of-pride types…”

“Transients,” Helen said, “or people who had no relatives or interested others who’d have noticed or cared when they vanished.” As she spoke, Helen started drawing with one finger, apparently idly, on the tablecloth; but where her finger passed, precise narrow lines started to show up on the linen, sketching out a bare-bones rendition of the area between downtown and the Hollywood hills, with Wilshire Boulevard the spine of the map, and various cross streets and avenues sprouting out of it on either side, like ribs from that spine. “Here, and here,” she said, adding a dot in onespot and another on either side of Wilshire, near the center of downtown, “ – these were the first ones. About a month ago. Both males, both apparently long-term vagrants who stayed in residential hotels down in the old Skid Row area, both in their early fifties. They both used all kinds of names at the places where they stayed, so neither has been positively identified. In this man’s case, they’re still trying to find dental records: in this one’s case, there was no way to find them.” She glanced up at the Silent Man. “I didn’t mention, when we started: his head was missing, too.”

He had been scribbling on his pad as Helen drew, making a copy for himself. Now the Silent Man paused. Now why on Earth?

Helen shook her head, kept drawing.“Here, and here,” she said, adding a couple more dots, again on either side of Wilshire but closer to Hollywood, “the next two. One of them was an escapee from one of the local psychiatric institutions, a man in his late sixties, possibly someone mentally or developmentally impaired. The hospital he got out of was a fairly tight-security kind of place: it’s hard to tell how he got loose. That would have been about three weeks ago.”

“When the earthquakes started,” Siff’hah said, leaning over the edge of the table to watch Helen draw.

“That’s right. The fourth one may have been another escapee, but from a different hospital. Same general presentation as the other victims, though. Found on waste ground – a vacant lot behind a bar, in this case – heart cut out.”

“Was that what killed him?” said Arhu.

Helen gave him a slightly cockeyed look.“That would do it for most of us, I’d think.”

“Oh, come on, I know that! I mean, was that how he was killed? Or did something else happen before he died and then they took his heart out?”

“Oh, sorry. No, nothing else happened, as far as the coroner could tell.” The look Helen gave Rhiow suggested that she was regretting the vast difference between the kind of forensics that would have been available in their home time and the kind available here and now. “The only possible alternate cause of death, in a couple of cases, was alcohol poisoning: or in one case, drinking booze that had been contaminated with denatured alcohol.”

Old-fashioned bathtub gin. Or else Sterno drinking, the Silent Man said, still scribbling away at his pad. Common enough behavior among the poorest bums down on Skid Row. The‘canned heat cocktail’ is pretty popular down there.

“The coroner didn’t think either of those victims had drunk enough, or were drunk enough, to have died of what they drank,” Helen said. “His opinion was pretty much that whatever was used to cut their hearts out had done the real work.”

“They were all cut out?” Hwaith said.

“As far as the coroner could determine,” said Helen. “There was some question in the case of the headless man: I’ll get to that shortly. But the instrument used seemed to have been the same one in all cases: and it was very, very sharp. The autopsies all comment that the wound edges were assharp as if a scalpel had been used. But no one makes scalpels with such big blades, or so strong: the incisions go right through the breastbone in every case.” She looked grim. “The coroner was getting very disturbed about that by the time he got to the fourth case or so. He said in one reportthat it was like someone had done this many, many times before, and was practiced at getting a heart out in just a thrust, a cut and a twist.”

They used to be big on that kind of thing down in Central America, weren’t they? the Silent Man said. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why nothing remains of those civilizations.

Helen threw a glance at Rhiow. He’s quick, she said silently. Aloud she said, “I’ve heard other reasons. Changes in the local climate, disease… But they were definitely into some behaviors that we’d think of as unhealthy.”

This, the Silent Man said, reaching out with his pencil to tap one of the dots Helen’s moving finger had left on the tablecloth, this is unhealthy. This is not the kind of thing that happens in L.A. And he frowned. But the Lady in Black did mention what’s his name…

“Tepeyollotl Night-Eater,” Rhiow said, “Lord of the Beasts of the Dark.” She could still hear the Whisperer’s distress at the mere sound of the name.

“Mesoamerican without a doubt,” Helen said. “I’m no expert, but the name sounds Azteca to me.”

Rhiow looked over at the Silent Man, feeling his growing unease and thinking how to continue along this line without freaking him out. The immediate association of cults with serial murder isn’t yet common in ehhif popular culture this early in the century, the Whisperer said in Rhiow’s ear. He may find this line of reasoning too bizarre to accept…

Nonetheless it seemed to Rhiow that the concept had to be broached.“We were talking about cults, back at the house,” she said. “Have you perhaps heard of any cult in this area that’s been trying to revive some aspect of the old Aztec rites?”

The Silent Man gave her an uneasy look. One that would take to killing people…as some kind of religious ceremony? he said. This many people?

“It’s not a very palatable idea, I’ll grant you,” Helen said. “It seems that many of the peoples of Central America enacted various forms of human sacrifice. In the beginning, at least some of them said they were trying to re-enact a sacrifice they thought the gods had originally made forthem, in order to save the world. But it may have started as a development of what we call sympathetic magic. Take something personally associated with another human being – a lock of hair, a fingernail paring – and you can obtain various kinds of power over them. Take the concept a step further, by offering a divine being something profoundly important to you – your blood, your flesh – and you obtain a different kind of power over them. The gods are obliged to repay the favor by giving you something you want.”

The Silent Man frowned at the table, his expression quite still.“What one sacrifices personally is one matter,” Helen said. “Other cultures share similar concepts. But later on the Mesoamerican religions started to change. People less often offered their own blood…and much more often, someone else’s. In time the sacrifice became a way for populations to stay stable, for nations to dominate each other or dispose of captives of war. Later still a nasty inversion happened: wars were started to acquire enough captives to keep the sacrifices going. And the Aztecs were the people most enthusiastic about doing such things in large numbers.”

The Silent Man shook his head. But why would people do that now? What in the world would they hope to gain?

“Maybe nothing in this world,” Arhu said. “The Lady in Black hated everything she saw here. She thought that whatever she’d been doing had made her some friend outside of everything.” His tail was lashing now. “A friend who was going to put an end to it all.”

Urruah had for some while been sitting upright with his eyes half-closed, looking like an angry Egyptian statue, and saying about as much. Now he opened his eyes a bit more.“I’d prefer it too,” he said, “if all this was just down to some crazed psychotic ehhif with a deathwish that he’s projecting onto everyone around him.” He turned to look at the Silent Man. “But I don’t think we can afford to ignore any explanation, no matter how distasteful. Any one might be the right one, and we don’t dare blind ourselves to spare our tender sensibilities. There’s too much at stake.”

Their eyes locked. After a long moment, the Silent Man let out a breath, looked over at Helen again. There were two more? he said.

She nodded.“Here, and here,” she said, adding two more dots on either side of the skeletal map. One of them was much further north from Wilshire than any of the others. The other was much further along, past Hollywood proper and further into the mountains still. “Sixteen days ago,” Helen said. “An old homeless woman – the only woman in this new group – and a middle-aged man with a police record, a burglar. Both dumped, like the others, on waste ground.” She folded her hands on the tablecloth and sighed.

Everyone was quiet for a few moments, considering the map.“That missing head,” Hwaith said after a few moments. “I keep thinking about that. I mean, not that taking their hearts isn’t bad enough, but why the head too?” He flicked his ears sideways and forward again in bemusement.

Helen shook her head.“That was the most problematic case in the group,” she said, “since the heart wasn’t removed in the same way as the other ones were. That poor man’s ribcage had been almost completely crushed: at first the police thought he’d been run over by something. But the coroner’s report suggested side-to-side crushing. He didn’t know what to make of it, especially since there were no tire marks or anything similar to be found on the body. There was some speculation in the file that the dead man might have been involved in some kind of industrial accident – but that wouldn’t have accounted for the tearing that the rest of the body experienced. And what kind of industrial accident involves first crushing your chest and then pulling your heart out?”

Tails were lashing all around the table, the exception being Sheba’s: the discussion of the technicalities of the situation had prompted her to have an after-lunch snooze, an impulse that Rhiow could completely understand but had to resist. In particular she was keeping an eye on the Silent Man, who was still looking rather unsettled.

He pulled in a long breath, let it out. There’ve been whispers on the street for a few weeks, the Silent Man said, that the police have been up to something. Some of the citizens around town — the ones whose businesses the police might, shall we say, be more than somewhat interested in — have been theorizing that some kind of big operation was under way. But no I think we can guess what that is.

“They’ve been concentrating on keeping the whole cluster of murders as quiet as they can,” Helen said. “That none of those killed have had close relatives to start making noisy inquiries and raise the profile of their deaths has made matters much simpler. But the police are still tremendously edgy.”

Can’t blame them, the Silent Man said. The war hasn’t been over that long. Everyone’s still getting used to “business as usual”. The last thing the cops want right now is something that would suggest they’ve been loosening up on the quality of local law enforcement now that the country’sgone off a war footing. Especially since now there are all these new boogeymen looking over the horizon: communists, fifth-columnists… Way too many scary things going on out in the big mean world for people to get into a panic about. The police would go out of their way to keep things quiet in a situation like this. Especially when they don’t understand what’s going on.

He sighed and stretched in his chair, then bent a curious eye on Helen. You sure did a full morning’s work, the Silent Man said. Just how’d you get all this stuff?

“By not being noticed,” Helen said, very demure.

The Silent Man gave her one of those small thin smiles. In that getup?

“I’ll grant you,” Helen said, “this wouldn’t be my preferred business attire.”

The Silent Man’s smile got a shade broader. I might have wondered if you were really a cop before, he said, but I’d say that doubt’s resolved. You’re as good as any cop I know at not giving a question a straight answer. He eyed Helen. ‘Not being noticed,’ huh. The way these guys do it? He nodded in Rhiow’s direction

Helen glanced at Rhiow, who put her whiskers forward, amused.“There are similarities to the way they and I operate,” Helen said. “But you don’t always have to vanish to get things done, or find things out. When I had to, I simply looked like I was supposed to be wherever I was. I do a good secretary imitation when I have to. And no one suspects a secretary who’s going through the files.”

Hide in plain sight… the Silent Man said. Always a sound method.

“All we have to do now,” Hwaith said, “is work out what connection this all has to our main line of inquiry. The earthquakes — ”

“Hwaith,” Rhiow said, “not that I’d argue that point with you at all. It’s vital. But we’ve got a whole lot of information to assimilate, all of a sudden…and for some of us it’s been quite a long day.” Rhoiw glanced around at the other People around the table. Like many toms, Urruah’s endurance wasn’t all it might be, and that blinking lazy look he was now starting to wear wasn’t the one he normally affected, but genuine sleepiness. Sheba was still gently snoring. Arhu and Siffha’h, though sitting upright, were now leaning against each other with half-closed eyes in what Urruah had some time ago christened “the bookends pose”, trying to appear as if they were merely in a state of lazy alertness: but Rhiow knew how likely this effect was to be ruined by one of them actually dropping off to sleep, which would immediately trigger the other into doing the same.“And our host, too, is off his normal schedule. Since he’s been kind enough to offer us a place to rest, maybe we should take advantage of that, and come back to the subject fresh this evening.”

Blackie, the Silent Man said, pushing his coffee cup away, I hate to admit it, but you said a mouthful. He pushed his chair back, glanced toward the outer room.

Then his eyes widened.

“Really? In there?” said a high female voice from the main room, carrying effortlessly over what remained of the low hum of conversation there from the latest of the lunch crowd. “I’ll go right back!”

In unison, Siffha’h’s and Arhu’s eyes flew open, and they sat up straight. Urruah’s eyes opened more slowly, but the whole look of him had suddenly gone strangely attentive. Hwaith, near him, sniffed the air once or twice…and his ears went back slightly, the expression of someone resisting the urge to a much less subtle reaction.

In though the door from the main room came a young, slim, slightly-built queen-ehhif. She was fair-haired, the hair tucked up in a peculiar looped style underneath yet another of those hats— this one a close-fitting, slantwise business in a startling peacock blue, with a bizarre confection of blue veiling and blue-dyed fluffy feathers trailing back from it. Her dress, too, was blue, with a bouffant skirt that rustled noisily every time she took a step, and was perhaps as wide againon each side as she was.

She came clicking along toward their table on delicate little high heels. Rhiow, watching her come, thought that she was probably very pretty as ehhif reckoned such things: but there was something about her face, and about the set of the vivid blue eyes, that gave her pause. I’m not always expert at figuring out their faces, she thought; Iau knows their expressions don’t work anything like ours. But Rhiow couldn’t get rid of an initial impression of a calculating mind behind the innocuously pretty look. “Why, Mr. Runyon,” the queen-ehhif said as she came to stand, or rather pose, by the table, looking them all over, “how unusual to see you here! And what an unusual gathering! Where are the PR people?”

The Silent Man simply looked up at her…and then at something else. Rhiow had noted and dismissed the big straw bag embroidered with bright-colored straw flowers that the queen-ehhif was carrying over her shoulder. But now in the bag something moved, and Rhiow’s ears went right forward as the scent that had been masked by all the food-and smoke-smells in here became much plainer, and a Person put her head up out of the bag.

White fur, fluffy: ears set apparently permanently in a bad-tempered sideways slant: green eyes, watery: a nose that ran. It was surprising to see a Person of so broad-faced a breed somehow managing to look so narrow, pinched and unpleasant. Maybe it’s that poor squashed nose, Rhiow thought. How does she breathe through something like that?

The Silent Man, meanwhile, was eyeing the queen-ehhif in much the same way he had when one of the waiters had turned up at their table with the wrong meal. He reached for his pad and pen, though not with any great speed. Meanwhile, the bag-Person was looking over the other assembled People with a peculiar heavy-lidded mixture of disdain and envy that left Rhiow surprisingly unwilling to greet her.

But Urruah’s unshakeable sense of his own superlative quality as an uber-tom would hardly let him stay silent in the face of a new queen, no matter how tired he was. “Hunt’s luck to you, madam,” he said to the Person in the purse, letting an appreciative purr get into the greeting.

Those green eyes dwelt on him for a long, appraising moment before the mouth opened. What came out first, though, was a huge yawn: and after that, when they’d all had a better view than they needed of the gullet behind the yawn and the jaws had closed with a snap, and the green eyes looked at Urruah once more and then at the rest of them, a word came out.

“Peasants,” the bag-Person said, closed her eyes, and sank out of sight.

Rhiow flicked one ear back and forth in a“Why am I not surprised?” gesture. Urruah sank back onto the banquette, wounded but keeping that purr going by way of concealment. Hwaith looked mortified, and turned his face away. Arhu and Siffha’h exchanged a glance. I could tear her a new one, Arhu said to Rhiow. Come on, Rhi. It’s too late now to spoil anybody’s appetite…

Just you be still for the time being until we understand what’s going on around here!

“But what a surprise to find you here having a tea party with the kitties!” said the queen-ehhif. Her voice was of the light tinkly sort, which sorted oddly with the hostility that seemed to be peering out from behind the words. “And with a friend! It’s lovely to see the rumors aren’t true that you’re completely heartbroken. Or beyond a little more cradle-robbing.”

The Silent Man stopped dead in his writing for a moment, staring very hard at the pad. Then he finished what he was writing, ripped the page off with a touch more force than was strictly necessary, and held the page up.

SCRAM. DOING BUSINESS HERE.

“But Giorgio sent me back here on purpose to visit you and your lovely pussies!” the she-ehhif said, looking, not at any of the People, but at Helen. “Maybe I can see why.”

Helen looked up demurely from under that hat, all dark-eyed inscrutability, and said nothing.

“Why don’t you introduce us?” the she-ehhif said.

The Silent Man looked away and pointedly had another drink of his coffee.

The she-ehhif looked at Helen, put out a white-gloved hand.“Anya Harte,” she said, with the air of someone who expected the other party to know the name as a matter of course.

“Miss Harte,” Helen said, and reached up to shake the hand held out to her. “Helen Walks Softly.”

“Why, how wonderfully…ethnic!” Miss Harte said, turning away from Helen to smirk at the Silent Man. “You know, you’re just going to be confirming what everyone’s heard about your exotic tastes in the ladies.” She somehow managed to make “exotic” sound like a bad word. “But then it’s to be expected, I suppose, as what you’re used to by now. Your wife’s a Spanish countess, after all, no matter what some people say! And where is Mrs. Runyon, by the way? It’s been so long since we’ve seen her around.”

The Silent Man just looked at Miss Harte. Finally he reached for the pen again, aware that in the shadows of the door into the main room, people were standing, trying not to look as if they were watching. He scribbled for a moment, tore a page off the pad and held it up.

OUT OF TOWN

“I’m sure she is,” Miss Harte said. “Well, while the cat’s away! – so to speak.” She smiled what even Rhiow could have told was a poisonous smile for an ehhif, if her whiskers hadn’t already been practically vibrating with the sense of happy spite that emanated from the woman.

Miss Harte turned on Helen a look that was as simultaneously dismissive and envious as the expression of the Person in her bag.“Are you in the business?”

“The only one that matters,” Helen said, still smiling.

Miss Harte sucked in a long, happily scandalized breath.“Oh, my!” she said. “And you’re so open about it! But I’m sure you’ll do very well at it, with your dark good looks.”

“Thank you,” Helen said, that absolutely imperturbable smile shifting not a fraction. “But better an honest darkness than night masquerading as the innocent day.”

At that Miss Harte blinked, but only for a second.“And you recite your lines so nicely, too! You should really come out and meet some of the really important movie people, so that you can get out of the bit-part rat race! A whole lot of the people from the big studios are going to be up at the party at Dagenham’s tonight. It’s an open party,Mr. Runyon would have no trouble getting you in, there are lots of people who’d love to see someone like you there – ”

Rhiow sat there in wonder listening to that little tinkly voice, which seemed able to imply something cruel or cutting with practically every word. It made her think of the sound that broken bottles made when dumped into the Manhattan garbage trucks early in the morning: little razor-sharp shards, raining down, every one of them capable of slicing you deep if you would only pick it up the wrong way… “Oh, do come along to Dagenham’s tonight, Mr. Runyon! They’d be ever so surprised to see you.” Some further nasty implication lay behind the words: Rhiow was uncertain whether she wanted to know just what. “And just for a laugh, you should bring all your little friends!” The People were included in the glance, but the word seemed mostly for Helen.

“Dagenham’s?” Helen said, looking over at the Silent Man.

He shook his head, shrugged.

“Oh, you must know Elwin Dagenham, he does freelance PR for Goldwyn and Paramount and everybody, and he’s so successful at it, he has a lovely big house up in the hills, there’ll be just hundreds of influential people, and all that champagne and caviar! He has the most wonderful caterers, butthen he would have to, with all the important people he knows, you can’t serve them just anything – ”

Miss Harte went prattling on, and the Silent Man watched her, apparently politely enough. But watching him, Rhiow could see– if the queen-ehhif couldn’t – that there was absolutely no engagement in his eyes. His regard of Miss Harte was entirely the detached look of a scholar examining some exotic and faintly repulsive life form. For her own part, Rhiow started to wash her face, and used the moment to steal another look at that dress. She wasn’t entirely clear about ehhif fashions of this period, but the top would have seemed cut fairly low in her home time. “’Ruah,” she said to her teammate with a sidewise glance, “is it just me, or is this queen-ehhif – “

“ – for here and now, dressed in a way that’s just a yowl short of rolling on the ground and waving her ffiyth in the air?” Urruah said. “Absolutely.” He glanced out toward the front room. “No wonder the maitre d’ wanted to get her out of sight. There would be some ehhif queens who dress that way around here, but not in daylight, and not in respectable places…”

The broken glass just kept on tinkling down.“…and you know, Mr. Runyon, it would do you good to get out, after all, we so rarely see you out in good society any more! It’s such a shame. I know everyone’s sure it’s your work keeping you so busy, but you’ve had such difficulties lately…”

The Silent Man held quite still again. Then he reached down to his pad: wrote, scribbled, tore the page off and displayed it.

MIGHT JUST DO THAT. FOR A LAUGH.

Rhiow, looking at the cool ironic set of his face, strongly suspected that the Silent Man had his own opinions about who the laugh would be on. But Miss Harte clapped her hands in glee.“Oh, how wonderful! I can’t wait to tell everyone! And you’ll bring Miss Softly with you? Oh, please say yes!”

“I might have something to say about that myself,” Helen said in that low musical voice of hers. Rhiow blinked, and saw Urruah’s eyes widen, as he caught what Rhiow had. Has she been spending too much time with us? Urruah said privately, amused. That was nearly a growl.

Your highest praise for an ehhif, isn’t it usually? Rhiow said, amused too. That with some work you could make a Person out of them? “However,” Helen said, “yes, I’ll come. It might possibly be interesting to see some of these important people.” And she glanced over at the Silent Man and dropped him just the hint of a wink.

That small thin smile came back, and Rhiow was glad to see it. Helen looked up again, and her eyes and Miss Harte’s locked.

“Well, isn’t that lovely then!” Miss Harte said. “Things will be starting up around eight, I believe: don’t be too late, you’ll miss the fun!”

And with a whirl and a rustle of crinoline from under the sky-blue silk, she went click-click-clicking away, back out through the door into the outer room. The Silent Man’s glance followed her. As soon as she was safely out through the door, and tinkling the beginning of a stream of inconsequentia at someone else in front room, his face relaxed a little: but the expression in the Silent Man’s eyes put Rhiow in mind of the look you might see on a tom who was considering a juicy spot in which to sheathe his claws at some later date.

Helen merely smiled. Silently she said to the group, Racist remarks, comments on my acting skills, and accusations of whoredom within sixty seconds of introduction! She quirked an eyebrow at the Silent Man. Possibly a record? About average for her, actually, the Silent Man said, sounding a touch relieved at Helen’s unconcerned tone. If she’d known you at all, she wouldn’t have taken so long. I’m just glad you’re not carrying a gun today.

If I was going to do something about her, Helen said, it wouldn’t be with a gun. Her grin went cheerfully feral.

The Silent Man’s smile loosened up too. Next to him, Sheba opened her eyes slightly, stretching, and then sniffed. “Is it just me,” she said, “or did I smell someone else in here?”

“Someone else was here,” Urruah said, “and did she ever smell. No wonder she didn’t want to get out of that bag.”

Sheba’s eyes opened a little wider. “Maiwi!” she said, and hissed under her breath. “That fat furball! And her nasty little ehhif, I’m sure.”

“In the so-completely revealed flesh,” Urruah said, and wrinkled his muzzle in the way a Person does when they’re sampling a scent that turns out not to have been exactly pleasant.

Hearing Sheba’s hiss, the Silent Man picked her up and started to stroke her. Sorry, doll, he said, then glanced at Helen. She annoyed about our little visitor?

“Both of them,” Helen said.

The Silent Man looked annoyed as well.‘Giorgio sent me back to see your kitties,’ he said. If that’s true, Georgie-boy doesn’t get his usual fat tip today, I’ll tell you that.

“On the contrary,” Helen said, rubbing her ungloved hands together and then reaching out to her wine glass. “Whatever you usually give him, I think you should double it.”

They all looked at her in surprise. Rhiow looked at Helen’s hands: the gesture had been like that of someone trying to get rid of some unpleasant substance or smell.

What’s that mean? the Silent Man said.

Helen sipped her wine, put the glass down again.“I wish I could tell you for certain,” she said. “I don’t know as yet. But it’s a scent – a sense – I’ll know right away if I run into it again. And somehow I have a feeling that someone she’s associated with will have some bearing on what we’re looking into. So I’m very glad,” she said, folding her hands in front of her like someone trying to hold them still, “that you agreed to go to this party.”

Helen, Rhiow said. What is it??

I don’t know. I’m not sure. For the moment…it’s just what I said. “But I’ll give you this,” Helen said aloud, looking over at the Silent Man, “Miss Harte’s not your usual practitioner of the dumb blonde act.”

Or any other kind, unfortunately, the Silent Man said. Fired her once, after she got a job on the production of a film version of one of my stories. She couldn’t cut it. Nice face, nice figure, no one’s arguing that. But can’t act, and can’t get along with anyone who can. Never saw anyone like her for ruining a good working mood on a set.

“What was that crack supposed to mean,” Hwaith said, “‘cradle-robbing?’”

The Silent Man didn’t look up for a moment, straightening the fork and spoon that remained of his place setting. This town’s full of gossip, he said. If they can’t find something mean and scurrilous to say about you that’s true, they’ll get mean and scurrilous about the appearances. You learn to pay it no mind.

Rhiow held her tail and her ears quite still, like someone who hadn’t heard a comment, and resolved to have a quiet private word with Sheba about this issue; for the pain suddenly seemed to be simply jutting out of the Silent Man from all angles, like fur a-bristle. Heartbreak: you can just smell it. Poor ehhif…

The Silent Man rubbed his eyes. We should probably get back and get some rest, he said, if we’re going to do this shindig tonight. He paused, looking at Helen. What about you, gorgeous? If you’re with these guys, do you need somewhere to stay too? Though he looked faintly uncomfortable as he said it.

Helen shook her head.“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I’m taken care of. And under the circumstances – “ She glanced back in the direction of the main room. “I’d bet that, after Miss Harte’s little performance, somebody out there’d be all too willing to tip off one of the chattier gossip columnists if we left together.” She stood up, smoothing her dress. “So I’ll say goodbye here, until this evening. I’ll meet you tonight at your place, if that’s convenient. Say seven thirty?”

That’ll be fine.

She reached out a hand, and the Silent Man took it.“See you then.” She glanced down at the People. “You’ll be all right here?” she said to Rhiow.

“Absolutely,” Rhiow said. “We’ll see you later, cousin. Dai stiho.”

Helen waved at them all and went swaying elegantly out through the front room. The Silent Man looked after her appreciatively, though the expression was tinged with curiosity. She’s right about the rumor-mongers, he said. They’ll be buzzing after tonight.

“That’s not going to make a problem for you, is it?” Urruah said.

The Silent Man folded his napkin and put it on the table. Not one that hasn’t been made before, he said, leaning a little sideways to catch the eye of one of the wait-staff in the main room and nod at him. And some of these problems I kind of enjoy.

The check arrived and was dealt with, and the People put themselves in order and headed out after their host as he made for the front door. All around, once again, ehhif stared at them and made amused comments. Rhiow did her best to ignore them, and hardly knew whether to be amused or appalled by Urruah, who stared right back at the ehhif as the group passed, giving them a Person’s mocking version of the human smile. “You’re like something out of one of those cartoons you keep trying to get me hooked on,” Rhiow said as they slipped out into the street, where the light was slanting golden toward later afternoon. “I think the cable in your dumpster is rotting your brains!”

“Just the pressure of celebrity,” Urruah said as they followed the Silent Man back around the corner to the car.

“Oh, please,” Rhiow said under her breath. But then she let the breath out. I’m getting cranky, she thought as they all climbed back into the car. Probably a good time to take my own advice and have a long nap… She sat back and watched the scenery start to go by again. I meant to tell you, though, she said privately to Urruah: you and the Silent Man, when he was having trouble getting to grips with what was going on — that was nicely handled, back there.

Urruah shrugged his tail. It’s got to be tough, being asked to believe so many impossible things in a day. He just needed someone to talk a little tough to him and get him over the hump.

Rhiow put her whiskers forward. And to do it in a tom’s voice, she thought. He might not have taken it so well from me.

The drive back was quiet. Arhu and Siffha’h were showing the inevitable aftereffects of a moderately strenuous wizardry followed by a big meal, and Urruah and Hwaith were both looking dozy; Sheba promptly fell asleep again on the Silent Man’s shoulder as they drove away from Hollywood Boulevard. When they pulled up in front of the Silent Man’s house, the People got out and trotted toward the door with weary pleasure.

Inside, as the Silent Man closed the door, Rhiow stood looking up at him for a few moments as the rest of her team wandered off into the house to find places to rest. Possibly he felt her regard, or just saw the thoughtful waving of her tail: he looked down. Something I need to do? he said, taking off his hat and hanging it on a hook by the door.

“Rest,” she said. “You’re sure you’re all right, otherwise?”

The small thin smile manifested itself again, though edged with weariness, as he loosened his tie. You mean, has it been an unusually strange day, even for me? Yes. Am I hanging onto my sanity regardless? As far as I can tell, yes. Thanks. And he surprised her by getting down on one knee and scratching her behind the ears. Are you all right? I get a feeling some of this hasn’t exactly been a normal day’s work for you, either. Whatever your normal day’s work looks like.

She put her whiskers forward.“No,” she said, “no, it hasn’t. And it won’t be later, either, I’m sure. But I’ll manage. Sleep well, cousin.”

You too.

He headed off into one of the back rooms, with Sheba padding after him: Rhiow heard a door shut.

She yawned prodigiously, blinked, and then took a turn around the open downstairs rooms to see where everyone was. Arhu and Siffha’h had already curled up on the sofa in their normal thoughtlessly affectionate heap, and were snoring more or less in unison, with one of Siffha’h’s self-maintaining force fields cordoning off their area. Urruah had found himself a place up in the Silent Man’s bookcase and tucked himself up into a compact round furball, and was dozing. Hwaith had stretched himself out in front of the open back door and was lying on his back with his eyes closed and his paws folded across his chest.

Rhiow looked out at the afternoon lawn: all was peace, not even a bird singing. She turned and made her way back into the front room, letting her nose lead her to a windowsill spot where no other Person’s scent lingered. There Rhiow turned around a couple of times, lay down, and half-closed her eyes on the cool spare sleekness of the living space. It’s not a design feature, though, she thought. These rooms are so clean because no one’s here often enough to cause a clutter. Poor Silent Man. Iau, help us help him!

And keep the known universes from being destroyed, the Whisperer said.

Yes, Rhiow said, put her head down on her paws, and closed her eyes completely. Absolutely. That too…

Much, much later– or so it felt – Rhiow woke up, blinking, and turned her head to glance out the window. She was mildly disturbed to see by the light outside that the sun had just barely set. She felt around in the back of her mind for the part of the Whispering that kept a time-reckoning for her, comparing her personal time against the ehhif versions of it. Yes, it was still the same day: she hadn’t accidentally slept the Sun around.

Rhiow yawned. A known side effect of residence at the“wrong” end of a timeslide was a certain disorientation in the feel of your personal timeflow: your soul knew that it was in more places at once than it ought to be. It’ll pass…or we’ll finish work here and get back home, and it won’t be an issue any more. But I keep finding myself wondering how Iaehh’s doing Just the price you pay when you’re in a relationship with an ehhif…

Rhiow got up, stretched, and made her way through the living area to the doors onto the back patio. Except for her team, who were all asleep as she’d left them, no other People were in sight.

She walked through the door, which had been left open a crack. What a place, she thought, where the crime rate is so low that you can leave things open like this… The shadows were gone now, the colors of the backyard flowers and the lawn softening down into less-definite shades, drained of their vividity by the growing dusk.

Rhiow wandered off into the least-kempt part of the shrubbery at the corner of the yard furthest from the house, and once decently out of sight could tell immediately that she’d picked the right spot to take care of business: others had done so before. She went unfocused, and when the necessities were handled, slipped out of the shrubbery again to see a dark shape peering into the house through the open doors.

“Hwaith?”

The shadow turned, saw her, purred— though the purr had a rueful sound to it. “You couldn’t sleep either?”

Rhiow waved her tail“no”, a regretful gesture, as she made her way over to the house-wall and the cat food dishes. “My brain’s just too full of new information,” she said. “It only let me sleep long enough to recharge my muscles.” She sighed, stretched, and sat down, looking over the dishes. “Your day’s been even longer than ours, though. Did you get enough rest?”

“Enough for the time being. It was a good thing I was up, though: Aufwi wanted to talk to one of us.”

“What’s the matter? Is he all right?”

“He’s fine,” Hwaith said. “There wasn’t any point in disturbing you; you’d just gotten to sleep. But he wanted to let everybody know that the gate was trying to put down yet another root.”

Rhoiw swore softly.“And did it?”

“No, he managed to stop it. But he also marked the location it was trying to sink that root into. I was about to go up and have a look at the spot.”

“We’ve got an hour or so before Helen will be here,” Rhiow said. “Let me have a bite and I’ll go with you.”

She went over, checked out the dishes, chose one that had some kind of chicken cat food in it, and ate. At first, Just a few bites, Rhiow thought– but her stomach started to make a liar of her as soon as the first bite was in her mouth. This is really unusually good, she thought, you have to wonder just what they’re putting in our food, or not putting in it, uptime –

Shortly she looked up to see that Hwaith had sat down to have a wash.“I’m sorry,” Rhiow said, and had to laugh at herself as she went over for a drink. “Maybe I’ve been working harder than I thought I was…”

Hwaith purred loud and raspy at her as she drank.“Don’t rush,” he said. “I’ve got a transit ready: it won’t take long for us to get there.”

She drank, sat down, scrubbed briefly at her face.“I guess it’s easy to forget how hard you’re working when you’re out on the trail,” Rhiow said. “And then when you’re somewhere new and interesting…”

“Or old and interesting,” Hwaith said. “Time travel has its attractions, I guess. Urruah’s certainly been enjoying wallowing in the past.”

Hwaith sounded a little wistful. Rhiow got up, stretched fore and aft once more.“While you wish you could have your mundane present back,” she said, trotting over to him. “Don’t think I don’t catch the occasional thought.” She put her whiskers forward. “And I can’t blame you. Which way are we headed?”

“For the moment, just into the bushes,” Hwaith said.

He led her over to a thick patch of rhododendron on the opposite side of the yard, and slipped under the canopy of broad glossy leaves. Rhiow followed. Back against the stuccoed wall separating the yard from that of the house next door, in the dimness Rhiow saw a patch of a different darkness, paler, twilit.“Right through here – “ Hwaith said, and slipped through.

Rhiow paused for just a moment, assessing the personal gating: a securely anchored and flexible construction, a nice piece of work. She stepped through after Hwaith, glanced around.

They were standing at the foot of a moderately steep hillside; its lower slope and the ground where they stood was covered with the pale oat grass that seemed to favor unwatered spots in this part of the world. Several other small hills came down to meet the ground around them, and rather to Rhiow’s surprise, none of them had houses built on them, or even roads.

“We’re about three miles northwest of the Silent Man’s place,” Hwaith said, heading up the hill. “Greystone, the ehhif call it. Up here — ”

As they climbed, the oat grass gave way to low shrubbery and ground cover, both somewhat overgrown.“This is only three miles away from where we were?” Rhiow said. “You’d think it was much further, out in the country somewhere – “

“Well,” Hwaith said, “when these ehhif marked out their home territory, they did it with an eye to their privacy. You’ll see in a moment.”

“I keep meaning to ask,” Rhiow said as they worked their way up through the underbrush. “Where’s home territory for you, Hwaith? Are you in-pride? Or have you got ehhif of your own?”

“Oh, no,” Hwaith said. “I’ve got a den-place down in Union Station, and I’m friendly enough with the ehhif there, but I haven’t been closely affiliated for a long time now. Managing the gate even under normal circumstances is enough of a strain that I wouldn’t want to have to do that and have ehhif too. It wouldn’t be fair to them, really. And as for a pride…” Suddenly Hwaith sounded as if he was coming up against something he didn’t want to deal with too closely. “Work tends to get in the way of pride-life, doesn’t it? I mean, the gate-management end of things. If Istart thinking about changing specialties, training a replacement, it might be another story.”

She gave him a wry look as they came out between one band of shrubbery and another near the top of the hill.“Hwaith, if you’re telling me that wizardry’s impairing your tom-life, you’re doing something wrong! Better have a word with Urruah.”

He put his whiskers forward, catching her amusement.“Oh, no, it’s not like that. I’ve hardly forsaken the queens for my Art! There were one or two when I was young, sure, but work got busy, nothing really came of it…” He shrugged his tail as they made their way through the second line of shrubbery. “And later on you learn not to expect it to be a Sehau-and-Aifheh thing every time. Might as well expect to have the sky rain fresh songbirds on you with their breasts ready plucked.”

Rhiow chuckled.“Songbirds? I’d settle for chicken.” But the sudden romantic turn of phrase amused her. Sehau was a tom: Aifheh was his queen… At least that was the way the most famous of the many versions of their story went — a sung-verse variant composed by one of the greatest of the cat-bards, the one who anciently kept company with the ehhif-bard Hharo’lahn in the Isles of the West. The tale had already been old when the People first told it to the ehhif-wizards of Egypt, and thousands of subsequent generations of People retold it to any species that would listen, and to each other. Toms especially loved it, doting on its over-the-top romance and unavoidable tragedy – but then toms always tended a little toward the histrionic, as something that would increase the drama in any given song. This, though, was an opinion Rhiow knew perfectly well it was wiser to keep to herself.

They came out of the shrubbery and stood at the hilltop, and Rhiow waved her tail in astonishment as she looked across the wide broad space to a huge frontage of house, built all in shadowy gray granite. The main building was two stories high, and at least a New York short block in length– a stately procession of arcades and porticoes, terraces and peaked roofs, railed stone terraces, archways, and doors of wood and glass. “This was an ehhif den?” Rhiow said. “The pride must have been huge!”

“Not at all,” Hwaith said as they headed toward it. “Only two ehhif lived here.”

“But not any more, I take it,” Rhiow said. The whole atmosphere of the place spoke strangely of abandonment: lightless windows, overgrown grass, ragged plantings hanging over leaf-scattered garden paths.

“No, it’s still lived in,” Hwaith said, leading the way down along the frontage. “A wealthy ehhif built the place some decades ago. I mean, a really wealthy one: the founder of one of the great old industrial ehhif families that have lived here for more than a century. This was the biggest private home ever built in the city: still is.” Hwaith glanced at the building’s l long frontage of the building as they paced by it. “After the old tom-ehhif built it, he gave it to his only tom-kit. It was to be the place where the young tom and his queen would live their lives out together.”

“But it didn’t turn out that way,” Rhiow said.

At the far edge of the huge graveled space to one side of the great house, they paused, and Hwaith flirted his tail“no”. “In this town,” Hwaith said, “so many things don’t necessarily go as planned…”

Rhiow put her nose up into the air, sniffed. The scents of old growth, damp bark, shed conifer needles and peppertree leaves, mingled in the still air with scents of stale water and baked stone. But there was something else as well.“Am I crazy,” Rhiow said, “or is that – oil?”

“Not crazy at all,” Hwaith said. “Not actually on the grounds, here. But it’s close by: there’s a well down the other side of the hill. Ironic, really, since you could say this whole place was built on oil.”

Rhiow stood still and listened. Muted by the way the ground fell away, she could hear a faint, repetitive creaking noise.“Is that the well I’m hearing?” she said.

“That’s it.” Hwaith started off in the opposite direction, and Rhiow padded after him. “Anyway, down over here is where that root was trying to sink itself – “

Along the ridge of the hill, a terrace reached away from one side of the main house, stretching perhaps a hundred yards. At the terrace’s end a formal box garden began, or what remained of one. Once it had been an interlocking maze of carefully trimmed lines of shrubbery. Now it was looking ragged around the edges, even dusty. “If these ehhif are so wealthy,” Rhiow said as they paced through the maze, “it’s surprising they don’t take better care of the place.”

“It is a little strange,” Hwaith said, “but they don’t seem to be here much. Watch out for these steps – a couple of the slabs are loose.”

They made their way down a shallow stairway at the far edge of the maze, heading for a small, flat area further down the hillside, hemmed in by an incomplete circle of trees.“This is where my gate was trying to root,” Hwaith said, “at least briefly.” He stopped, his nose wrinkling. “Wait a minute. Do you smell – “

To a Person’s senses, ehhif blood had a metallic reek, instantly identifiable. Even if there had been rain to wash it away, which there had not, the scent would still have lingered in the soil for weeks, unmistakable. Now Rhiow walked slowly into the center of the ring of trees, sniffing carefully.

The scent was very old. Rhiow spent a while working her way over toward one spot in particular, near the encircling ring of trees, where once upon a time, the blood had soaked deep. But that had been a long time ago. Hwaith came up by her, put his nose down, inhaled. His tail lashed.

“Years old,” he said. “But I’d have trouble saying how many. Forensics hasn’t been my field.”

“Could this be a murder the police here missed?” Rhiow said. “Is this anything you’ve heard about before?”

“No,” Hwaith said, sounding upset.

Rhiow’s tail was lashing too, now. “We’re going to have to get Arhu up here,” she said. “I can’t believe this. Another – maybe not a murder, but something. And no way to tell if it’s germane to what we’re doing.” She put her nose down to the ground again, took another long breath –

— froze. A sour stink, faint, damp, acrid, teased her nose. Her mind went back to the stink she’d scented when she had had her teeth sunk into the diagnostic webbing of Hwaith’s gate, just after they’d arrived. “Do you smell that?” she said.

He put his nose down by the ground, breathed, then opened his mouth to rebreathe the scent.“Yes.”

Rhiow shook her head, sneezed. Then she sat down, licked a paw and scrubbed at her nose briefly, it itched so with the warring scents.“I wonder,” she said. “Hwaith, do earthquakes have a scent?”

He gave her an odd look.“That’s a thought that never would have occurred to me.”

“These earthquakes, anyway,” Rhiow said. “Your gate’s hyperstrings — at least, the diagnostic strings tied to the other places where the gate was trying to put down roots — they were full of this smell.”

“You’re right,” Hwaith said. “But, Rhiow, we haven’t had a quake here.” He paused. “At least, not recently. Certainly not in the last six weeks. Maybe not for much longer.”

“I wonder if we’re about to have one here.”

He looked thoughtful.“That could be. Are you suggesting we should try to prevent it?”

Rhiow sneezed again– once without trying, and then once on purpose to try to clear her nose of the warring scents. “I don’t know if we could. Even if we could, I don’t know if it would be wise. But I think we should make sure one of us is keeping an eye on this site, because if we can investigate the quake while it’s active, we might be able to run a trace back to the cause.”

Hwaith’s tail waved slowly from side to side as he thought. “It’s worth a try,” he said. “I’ll take a moment to jump back over to where Aufwi’s watching the gate…see how he’s doing, and ask him to add a tracer to the diagnostic that’s looking at this attempted root.”

“If you would,” Rhiow said.

With barely a breath of displaced air and only the softest pop, Hwaith vanished. Rhiow blinked– the departure had been unusually slick – and got up to walk out of the circle of trees, over to where the plantings parted to allow the southward vista to open up. Below, past the nearer, barren hills, the city view was beginning to glitter through the dusk — that softer, yellower, fainter light that had so struck Helen the first time she saw it. “Quite a view…” she said.

“It is,” Hwaith said from right behind her.

Rhiow jumped– not exactly off the ground, but she started violently enough that all her fur stood up in response. She came around to face Hwaith, still bristling. “How do you do that?”

His eyes were wide with shock.“What?”

“You transited in and I didn’t even hear you come back!”

“I didn’t want to disturb you!” “Well, would you please do it louder after this, because I am disturbed!”

Then Rhiow took a long breath.“Sorry,” she said. “Sorry. I’m on edge, it’s wrong of me to take it out on you. But sweet Iau up a tree, Hwaith, I’ve never heard anyone self-gate that quietly!”

He ducked himself down and twisted his head to her, and Rhiow’s annoyance dissolved instantly into amused embarrassment, for it was the kind of gesture a young Person, half-apologetic, half-playful, would have used with a playmate. “Sorry,” Hwaith said, giving her so upside-down a look from those brassy eyes that for a second or so he was practically standing on his head. Then he righted himself. “I don’t think about it often. I told you, I have the Ear sometimes – the ulterior-hearing gift. A lot of the time I can hear the air about to move, or what direction it’s going to move in, and nudge it out of moving explosively.”