by Diane Duane
He gave her a rueful look. "Sometimes," he said, "yes. Yes, you're right." He sighed. "Stranger or not," he said, "it's nice to have someone around who understands. But then you're not exactly a stranger anymore."
"No, of course not. When we get all this solved, Huff, you should come visit us in New York. We'll show you and your team around the gates at Grand Central, 'do the town' a little. Urruah knows some extremely good places to eat."
"I know," Huff said, sounding a little more amused. "I keep hearing about them." His whiskers were right forward now.
"I bet," Rhiow said, resigned. "Look... we've got a long day ahead of us tomorrow. I should get home. You try to get some rest, Huff, and we'll see you later on."
He waved his tail in agreement. "Go well," he said. They touched cheeks: and Rhiow went out the back, through the cat door, and down the alley, heading for the Tower Hill Underground station, thinking, a little absently, how nice it was that it no longer felt strange to rub cheeks with Huff at all.
She got home very late, by New York time, and found Iaehh in bed and snoring. As quietly as she could, Rhiow curled up with him, too tired even to care whether he would roll over on top of her in the middle of the night, as he often did while feeling for someone else who should have been in the bed, but wasn't. She sighed at the thought of what now seemed about a hundred years ago: a time when both her ehhif were here and happy, and her life managing a gating team had seemed relatively simple and uncomplicated...
About a second later, she woke up. Oh, unfair, she thought. It was typical that, on a night when you most needed the sense of being asleep for a long time, you instead got that "cheated" feeling of having been asleep almost no time at all.
It was, however, nearly six in the evening. Iaehh wasn't back from work yet, but he would be soon, and if she didn't get out fairly quickly, he would turn up and delay her. Rhiow sighed and got right up, stretching hard fore and aft: ate (finding the bowls washed and filled again), then washed and used the box, and headed out for Grand Central. Half an hour later Rhiow was in London, on the platform in the Underground station, watching Urruah reconstructing his timeslide. Auhlae was there, and Siffha'h: Arhu was sitting off to one side, ostensibly watching Urruah fine-tuning his spell, but (to Rhiow's eyes) actually staying rather pointedly out of Siffha'h's way.
"Perfect timing," Urruah said, looking up. "I'm just about set here."
"You have all those extra coordinate-sets that you wanted to test laid in as well?" Rhiow asked, strolling over to the "hedge" of burning lines that was the spell diagram. It looked taller than it had been before.
"Yes indeed," Urruah said. "We'll take them in order after we check out the main one, the 'scarred' timeline. Everybody, come and check your names. We're ready to rock and roll."
Rhiow jumped into the circle to reexamine her name. Auhlae jumped in after her, remarking, "I would have thought you were more interested in the classical line of things, Urruah."
His whiskers went forward. "Always. But I believe one's interest in music should be balanced."
"If it's ehhif music you're talking about," Siffha'h said as she jumped into the circle as well, "you're too balanced by half. All that screeching."
Urruah chuckled. "Wait till you're older and you have more leisure to develop your tastes."
"Older," Siffha'h said. "I'm sick of hearing about it. And I'm getting older right now waiting for you People to get your acts together!" She glared at Arhu.
Arhu, taking no apparent notice, made a small, elegant jump, which landed him precisely on the spot Urruah had laid out for him inside the circle. He bent down, checked his name, and then turned his back to Siffha'h, yawning, and sat down with his tail wrapped around his toes.
"Huh," said Siffha'h, glancing at Arhu and planting her forepaws in the power-feed area of the spell. She looked over at Urruah.
"Everybody sidled?" he said. "Good. First set of coordinates is ready," he said. "The spell's on standby. Feed it!"
"Consider it fed," Siffha'h said.
The world vanished in a blast of light and power so vehement that Rhiow was glad she had been sitting down: otherwise she would have fallen over. This was not anything like Urruah's style of power-feed, decorous and smooth like a limo starting and stopping. This was a crash of power and pressure, happening all at once from all around, like being at the center of a lightning strike. In the middle of it all she thought she heard something like a yowl of frustration, but she couldn't be sure. When the light cleared away again, Rhiow half expected to smell ozone: she had to sit there for a moment or so and shake her head, waiting for her eyes to work again. After a few moments they did, but she still saw a residual blur of green light at the edges of vision for a little while, the remnant of the image of the first flash of the spell-circle as it came up to power.
She looked around and saw that they were all once more sitting in a muddy street: and Rhiow sighed at the thought of what getting clean again was likely to taste like. The sky above them was that of early morning, clear and blue: a surprising contrast to the last time. "All right," Urruah said, "there's the tripwire. I've closed the gate." Then Urruah looked up and around, and said suddenly, "And we've got a problem."
"What?" said Rhiow.
He was looking up at the Moon, which stood high in the southern sky at third quarter. They all looked too.
The Moon was white, with only the faintest blue shadows.
"Oh, vhai," Auhlae said, "this isn't the contaminated timeline!" She turned to Urruah. "This is the predecessor to our London! Our world! For pity's sake, Urruah, how did that happen?"
Urruah was dumbfounded. "Auhlae, you saw the settings, we worked on them together— you tell me!"
"I'll tell you how it happened," Siffha'h said, staggering to her feet. "We were being blocked. Couldn't you feel it? Urruah?"
"I'm not sure."
"Nice excuse," Arhu muttered.
"Oh, go swallow your tail!" Siffha'h spat. "Who asked you for anything like an opinion? As if you could produce one out your front end instead of your rear for a change. We were being blocked! Something knocked us sideways. Something vhai'd well doesn't want us in the alternate timeline! Like the Lone One!"
She was bristling with fury, as much from winding up in the wrong place, Rhiow thought, as for having her competence called into question. But there was another possibility that had occurred to Rhiow: that the other timeline was becoming stronger, strong enough now to begin interfering with any temporal gating. But there's no evidence of that... yet.
"It could happen," Rhiow said. "For the meantime, we shouldn't stand here arguing." She glanced over at Urruah. "It's not a wasted trip, 'Ruah. We still have some things to check on, and some sources who would be helpful to talk to here. Among other things, would you say this is at least the right year?"
Urruah blinked. "Let's send Arhu to steal a newspaper."
"There's no need to steal anything," Arhu muttered. "These ehhif drop their newspapers all over the place, besides pasting them up on boards near the newsstands."
They walked out onto George Street, sidled, and glanced around them with a little more sense of leisure than they had felt the last time, for this was after all their home universe: there was no reason to rush away from it. Rhiow looked across the street and saw that the Tower Hill Underground station did not exist as yet. She listened, and the Whisperer told her that the worldgate complex was, at this point in its development, housed a little behind them, somewhere under the Fenchurch Street railway station.
"Maybe we should try to look up the local gating team," Siffha'h said, glancing around her.
"Much as I wouldn't mind being social with them," Rhiow said, "I think we have other things to concentrate on at the moment. Is that one of your 'newsagents' down there, Arhu?"
"Yeah. Come on."
He led them eastward as far as Trinity Square. "The mud's sure the same," Urruah said, with resignation.
"Yes, but at least there aren't any crazed
car drivers here," Rhiow said. "Not that it's much of a consolation. They'll come soon enough...."
In Trinity Square they paused by a little shop that had a board outside with many newspapers pinned up to it and ready to be torn off, like pages of a calendar. "Try that with The New York Times," Urruah murmured.
Rhiow put her whiskers forward at the thought. The group hung back, out of the way of the ehhif making their way up and down the sidewalk, while Arhu went up to have a look at the newspaper.
He came trotting back with a satisfied expression. "April eighteenth, eighteen seventy-four."
"All right," Rhiow said. "A little early, but at least it's the right year. Let's go up to the British Museum and see 'Black Jack.' "
It was a long walk, nearly a mile and a half. All of them were footsore and extremely dirty by the time they got there, for no one felt it wise to expend the wizardry needed for skywalking when there might be much more important business to be handled without notice. So they went as city cats would, though sidled: down Tower Hill onto Great Tower Street and over onto Eastcheap: down Cannon Street onto the street called St. Paul's Churchyard, under the shadow of the massive dome of St. Paul's: up Ludgate Hill to Fleet Street, and then up Chancery Lane, northward to High Holborn and finally into Bloomsbury. By the time they got to Museum Street, they were all hungry, and Auhlae looked at the mud on her beautiful fur and made a despairing face.
"I can't wash like this," she said, "I just can't. There's no time, and..." She sighed, and said a few words under her breath in the Speech. The mud dried and went straight to powdery dust. She shook herself hard, and for a moment was in the center of a small chocolate-colored cloud. Then the dust settled, leaving her more or less the color she should have been.
"Now there's a thought," Rhiow said. "Auhlae, you're a genius."
A few moments later there were several chocolate-colored clouds, and somewhat cleaner People emerging from them. "Now I feel better," Auhlae said, smoothing down the fur behind her ears. "I wouldn't like to meet a Person of note looking like I just crawled out of a sewer."
They walked in through the iron gates of the museum, toward the noble main façade with its columns and Greek-style portico, all carved with what one might have taken at first for ehhif gods until a better look revealed them to be allegorical figures discreetly labeled DRAMA and POETRY and PROGRESS OF THE HUMAN RACE. They walked up the stairs and waited for some ehhif to open the doors for them, a matter of a few seconds only: then they went through into the main entrance hall, and glanced up at the huge statue of an ehhif that leaned there, looking out thoughtfully at the world.
"Who's that?" Arhu said. "Another fake god?"
"It's a great taleteller, dear," Auhlae said, "one who told his stories a couple of hundred sunrounds ago, from this time anyway. Hsshah'spheare, his name was."
"Whether he's that great," said someone off to one side in the great echoing hall, "when the best-known mention he makes of our People is to suggest turning one of them in a frying pan, is a question yet to be resolved. But never mind that at the moment."
They all turned to see a big, big black-and-white cat come pacing along the marble floor toward them. With his white bib and white feet, he gave the general impression of wearing ehhif formal wear. "Welcome," he said. "I'm glad to see you!"
"We're on errantry, as you've guessed, having seen us sidled," Rhiow said, "and we greet you very well: we've come some way to see you. Do I have the honor of addressing Black Jack?"
The big handsome Person put his whiskers forward. "That's how the ehhif know me: I suppose the name has got about by now. But you might more properly call me Ouhish, though, if you will. And I'm very glad to see you so soon: I hadn't thought you could possibly turn up with such speed."
Rhiow looked at Urruah and the others, then back at Ouhish. "I'm sorry. You say you sent for some wizards?"
"Yes," Ouhish said.
"Well," Urruah said, "we're confused, now. We thought we came on business of our own. But we'll be glad to help you in any way we can."
"You're saying you weren't sent?" Ouhish said.
Rhiow paused for a moment, then laughed. "Oh, no. Wizards are always sent... one way or another. It's just that the Powers That Be don't always tell us that They're doing it. Tell us your trouble, and we'll do our best to assist you."
"Well," Ouhish said, "let's go somewhere quiet where we can make introductions and get things sorted out. Will you follow me?" And he led them in through the pillared vestibule, and into the depths of the museum.
It was a splendid place by any calculation, ehhif or feline. Rhiow had to keep reminding herself that much of the wonderful statuary and carving here was regarded as stolen or looted, though an earlier period's ehhif had thought of what they were doing as "collection": and violent arguments were still going on, she knew, about the proper home for some of the more beautiful and ancient artwork like the Elgin Marbles. But in the meantime, the stuff was here, and Rhiow told herself that it seemed poor-spirited not to enjoy looking at it if she had the chance.
There was little enough statuary to start with, for Ouhish led them on through the inner vestibule and the Room of Inscriptions, its walls all covered with writings from the ehhif peoples of old Greece and Rome, and straight into the Reading Room. In Rhiow's time the British Museum's library functions had all been moved to another building, bigger and some said better suited for the huge size of the collection as the twenty-first century approached: but many lamented the loss of the noble old domed Reading Room, still preserved but no longer used for the purpose for which it had been intended. They walked through, now, into this place where for once ehhif walked as quietly as cats, and Ouhish led them off to one of the corners of the room, what was called the New Library, a beautiful wood-paneled area stacked high with laddered bookcases and card catalogs.
They sat down under a quiet table in one corner, touched noses and breathed breaths, and introduced themselves. "Now tell us what your trouble is, and we'll try to help you," Rhiow said. But Ouhish would have none of it, and insisted that they tell their story first.
Urruah lifted his eyebrows. "This is going to be complicated," he said, but he began to lay out their business for Ouhish as clearly as he could. There was no prohibition against telling other People, in the line of errantry, that you were time-traveling, but naturally you would work hard to keep from telling them anything inappropriate, anything that would hurt them in their own lives, or tempt them to hurt others. Urruah spoke for about ten minutes, choosing his details with care, and at the end of it, Ouhish tucked himself down and looked at them all with astonishment.
"More than a hundred years in the future," he said. "The questions I could ask you..."
"It might take us a while to work out which ones we could safely answer," Rhiow said. "But maybe you'd let us ask first, since then we'll have more leisure to deal with your problem. Have there been any attempts on the life of the queen of late?"
Ouhish looked surprised. "You mean the ehhif-queen? Nothing recent. Someone tried a couple of years ago."
"Did they try shooting her?" Arhu said.
"That's right. She was out driving— a madman came out and took a shot at her with a pistol. He missed, thank Iau. It's happened before, too, a few times: usually where there are crowds."
"Do the ehhif here not like her, then?" Siffha'h said, sounding intrigued.
"Oh, she's been greatly loved, in the past. But things change." Ouhish looked a little uncomfortable. "You know that her mate died some while back? They were very much attached. She was miserable, poor thing, and she withdrew almost entirely from public life after her mate's death. That's not something a queen of ehhif can do, you understand. She has duties she must perform. And the ehhif she rules saw that she wasn't doing those duties, or only doing them marginally: and those ehhif who've been saying for a long time that there should be no queens anymore, but just the pride-toms to lead everything, and decide everything— their way of thinking has bee
n gaining ground." Ouhish looked embarrassed. "I wouldn't like to give offense, cousin," he said to Rhiow, "but I think I know your accent— and it's a government like your ehhif's at home that some of these people want, and the queen got rid of as well. A lot of the ehhif seem to think that it will happen in the next ten years or so: or at least by the turn of the century. It's no matter to them that the queen has been showing signs of breaking out of her withdrawal, at last. It may be too late for her now."
Rhiow's tail twitched slowly while she thought that Ouhish's turn of phrase was unfortunate.
"Well," Rhiow said. "That's all rather sad. There are other dangers lying in wait for her as well: perhaps another assassination attempt... we don't know for sure. One of the things we came for was to try to find out a date on which the attempt might happen, so that we might prevent it."
Ouhish looked shocked. "Do you have any clues at all?"
"We saw them burying her on the fourteenth of July," said Arhu, "in a universe close to this one. We don't know how long might have elapsed between her funeral and whatever happened to her."
"I would doubt it would have been as far back as the first of the month, if they were burying her on the fourteenth," Ouhish said. "But it could be almost anytime between, say, the fifth and the eleventh. For surely they would let her lie in state for a little time." His tail was lashing. "Cousins, this is terrible news!"
"If you can spread it where it will do some good," Rhiow said, "you may be able to help prevent the attempt from succeeding. We may be able to help as well, but we also have other business to attend to, which, believe it or not, may be even more important. One thing I have to ask you: Have there been any strange occurrences in London lately?"
"Strange occurrences?"
