by Diane Duane
Urruah lifted his head and roared too, but the sound was almost drowned in the wave of shrieks of hate that followed it. Single sickle-claws three feet long scrabbled against the circle, jaws half the size of one of their bodies tried to slash or bite their way in; and everywhere on your body, though nothing touched you physically, you felt the pressure of the little, cold, furious eyes. There was intelligence there, but it was drowned in hatred, and gladly drowned. The impression of outraged strength, pebbled and mottled greenish- and bluish-hided bodies throwing themselves again and again at the circle; the impression of raging speed, and the interminable screaming, a storm of sound in this closed-in place: that was what you had to deal with, rather than any single, rational impression of This is a deinonychus, that is a carnosaur—
"That's what it was," Arhu was moaning, almost helplessly, like a starving kitten. "That's what it was—"
Rhiow swallowed. "The circle's holding?" she said to Urruah.
"Of course it is. Nothing they can do about it. But how are we going to get out?"
It was a fair question. He had said "five deep"; possibly he had been optimistic. The cavern was now packed so full of saurians that there was no seeing the far wall, except for the part near the roof, above the tallest heads. Rhiow had a sudden ridiculous vision of what Grand Central would look like at rush hour if it were full of saurians, not people: a whole lot like this. We need shopping bags, though, she thought, pacing around the circle, forcing herself to look into the terrible little eyes, the jaws snapping futilely but with increasing frustration and violence against the immaterial barrier of the circle: and Reeboks and briefcases. Or no, maybe the briefcases wouldn't be in the best of taste—
"Done," Saash said.
"The whole repair?"
"Yes. I'm going to bring up the rest of the Grand Central complex again," Saash said. "Tell our connection to get ready."
Heard that, Kit said. We're set. Rhiow, if you need help, there's backup waiting.
Might need it, Rhiow said, but it's hard to say. Hang on—
Saash leaned into the catenary again, put out one single claw, inserted it into an insignificant-looking little loop in one string— it looked like a snag in a sweater— and pulled.
The loop straightened, vanished. The catenary came alive again, the full fire of its power bursting up through the strings that had been offline. Saash stood watching it, her head tilted to one side, listening.
"Feels right," she said. "Khi-t?"
We've got the gates back, said another voice: Nita's. Want us to test the bad one?
"Please."
The screaming and scrabbling and clawing went on all around them, undiminished. Okay, it hyperextended all right—
"I saw that," Saash said. "The catenary's feeding the patched string properly. Shut it again?"
—Closed.
Saash sat down and started to scratch again, looking surprisingly satisfied with herself, under the circumstances. "I deserve some milk."
"So do we," Urruah roared at her, "and we also deserve to get out of here with our pelts intact, which seems increasingly unlikely at the moment! What in Iau's name are we supposed to do now?"
Saash looked at the catenary, then back at Rhiow, and slowly her whiskers started to go forward.
"Oh, no, Saash," Rhiow said. "Oh no."
"Why not? Have you got anything better?" Saash said. "You want to try the odds of dropping the circle and having time to hit them with the neural inhibitor? I don't think so, Rhi! There are so many of them leaning against that spell right now, they'd just squash us to death the second we dropped it, never mind what else they'd do to us. Which they will, as you remember from last time."
Rhiow swallowed. Arhu stared at Saash in dumb terror. Urruah said, "Just what are you thinking of?"
Saash started to smile again, a smile entirely in character with a giant prehistoric predator-cat. "I'm going to push the catenary back out there without its 'insulating" spell in place," Saash said.
"Your brain has turned to hairballs!" Rhiow shouted. "What if it degrades the circle on the way through?"
"It won't."
"How sure are you?"
"Very sure. I'll leave the 'insulation' in place until after I've shoved it outside."
"Oh, wonderful, just great! And what about when you take the insulation off, have you thought that it might just degrade the circle then, and blast us all to ashes?"
"It shouldn't."
"Shouldn't—!"
"You want to sit here and wait them out?"
Rhiow looked out at the room full of roaring, shrieking saurians. Those at the far side of the room were already settling down to wait.
"It won't work. No matter how long we sit here, they'll wait," Saash said. "And sooner or later we're going to need food and sleep, and as soon as the last one of us goes to sleep, and the circle weakens enough to let them in—"
Urruah looked from Rhiow to Saash, then back to Rhiow again. "She's got a point," he said.
Rhiow's tail was lashing. "You think you have a life or so to spare?"
"You want to find out if it matters," Urruah said, more gently than necessary, "down here?"
Rhiow licked her nose again, then looked at Saash. "All right," she said. "I concur."
"Right," Saash said.
She looked at the catenary. It drifted toward the edge of the circle; its own protective circles drifted with it.
Some of the saurians nearest the place where it was about to make contact looked at the catenary with the first indications of concern. Its rainbow fire fell into their big dark eyes, turning them into a parody of People's eyes— bright slits, dark irises; they blinked, backed away slightly.
"They're not wild about the light," Urruah said.
Saash nodded. The small circle surrounding the catenary made contact with the larger one: they "budded" together again. As if becoming somewhat uneasy at this, more of the saurians began to back away, and the screaming and roaring started to take on an uncomfortable edge. Some of the saurians nearer the walls stood up again, began to mill around, catching their companions' unease. Saash closed her eyes then and held quite still.
In one swift motion the catenary popped back out through the circle. It was now bereft of the smaller, "child" circles that the main protective circles had generated around it, and saurians jostled away from it as it drifted quickly back to its original position in the center of the cavern.
The saurians parted around it, closing together again nearest the circle, and going back to their raging and scrabbling against its invisible barrier. Saash looked over their heads as best she could, past them, to where the catenary had now settled itself back in place.
"All right?" she said. "Mind your eyes, now."
Rhiow started to close hers but was caught too late. The catenary suddenly stopped being merely a fiercely bright bundle of rainbows and turned into a raging floor-to-ceiling column of pure white fire. Lightning forked out of it in all directions, at least what would have passed for lightning. The whole cavern whited out in a storm of blinding fire that hissed and gnawed at their circle like a live thing. All Rhiow's fur stood on end, and her eyes fizzed in their sockets. Behind her, Arhu cried out in fear. The desperate shrieks of the saurians were lost in the shrieking roar of the unleashed catenary.
Eventually things got quiet again, and Rhoiw scrubbed at her tearing eyes, trying to rub some vision back into them. When she could see again, the catenary was once more sizzling with its normal light. But there was little else left in the cavern that was not reduced to charcoal or ash, and nothing at all left that was alive in the strictest sense… though bits and pieces here and there continued to move with lizardly persistence.
Saash stood there, looking around her with grim satisfaction. "Definitely," she said, "not at all wild about the light."
Urruah got up and shook himself, making a face at the smell. "I take it I can drop the circle now."
"It's as safe as it's going to get, I th
ink," Rhiow said, "and once it's down, we can use the other spell if we need it." She went over to the crouching Arhu. "Arhu, come on— we have to go."
He looked up and around him, blinking and blinded, but Rhiow somehow got the idea that this blindness had nothing to do with the light. "Yes," he said, and got up. Urruah had hardly collapsed the circle before Arhu was making hurriedly for the cavern-entrance through which they had come. "We have to hurry," he said. "It's coming—"
Urruah looked from Arhu to Rhiow. "Now what?"
"What's coming?" Saash said.
"The greater one," he said. "The father. The son. Quick, quick, it's coming!" His voice started to shade upward into a panicky roar. "We've got to get out before it comes!"
Rhiow's tail was lashing with confusion and concern. "I'm willing to take him at his word," she said. "There's no reason to linger— we've done what we came for. Let's get back up to the light."
* * *
It took less time than going down had taken. Despite the thought that they might shortly be attacked again, they were all lighter of spirit than they had been— all of them but Arhu. He wouldn't be quiet: the whole way up through the caverns with him was a litany of "It's coming" and "That's what it was…" and "the greater one," and an odd phrase that Rhiow heard only once: "the sixth claw…" Arhu didn't grow silent again until they came up into the last cavern, past the great teeth of stone, to see the red-gold light of that world's sunset, and the green shadows beneath the trees beyond the stony threshold. There he stood for a long time while Saash checked the main matrix for the repaired gate, and he gazed at the declining sun as if he thought he might never see it again.
The thought had certainly been on Rhiow's mind earlier; but now that they were up and out, there were other concerns. She glanced through the patent gate to the darkness beneath Grand Central, from which Kit and Nita were looking through, interested. "Many thanks," she said. "Having you here as backup lent us the confidence to go all out."
Kit made a small, only fractionally mocking bow: Nita grinned. "Our pleasure," she said. "We're all in the same business, after all. Want us to leave this open for you?"
Rhiow looked over at Saash. "No," Saash said, turning away from the matrix she was checking. "I want to check its open-close cycle a couple more times. But nicely done, my wizards. Go well, and let's meet well again."
"Dai," the two said; and the gate snapped from its view of the Grand Central tracks to the usual shining warp/weft pattern.
Rhiow turned to Saash, who said, "The matrix is just fine now. That design flaw in the braiding of the catenary is going to have to be looked at, at some point. But not just now…"
"No," Rhiow said. "I'll talk to Har'lh about it; I'll have to report to him this evening anyway. But, Saash… what a job. And you did wonderfully, too," she said to Urruah. "Not many circles could have taken that punishment."
She went over to where Arhu was standing. He looked at Rhiow with an expression equally composed of embarrassment and fear.
"I screwed up," he said.
She breathed in, breathed out. "No," she said, and gave him a quick lick behind one ear. He stared at her, shocked. "You started your Ordeal. Now at least we have some kind of hint of what your problems are going to be."
He looked at her, and away again, toward the sunset: the sun was gone now, the darkness falling fast.
"Yes," he said, in a voice of complete despair. "So do I."
Eight
What with the report for Har'lh, and seeing Saash and Arhu safely back to the garage— for Arhu still seemed very disturbed, though his litany of fear had stopped— it was late before she got home. At the sound of the kitty door going, Hhuha looked up from where she was sitting, reading in the big chair. From inside, in the bedroom, a man's voice was saying, "And now tonight's list of Top Ten Reasons to call the Board of Health—"
"Mike," Hhuha said, "she's back."
Rhiow ran across to her and jumped in her lap, purring, before Hhuha could rise. "Oh, you rotten little thing," Hhuha said, picking her up and nuzzling the side of her face, "I've been worried stiff, where the heck have you been all evening?"
Once again Rhiow wondered, as she had before, which ehhif demigod Heck was. "Don't ask," she muttered. "But I'm glad to be back, oh, believe me I am. Mmm, you had pizza again. Any leftovers?"
Hhuha held her away a little, leaving Rhiow's hind legs dangling. "I wish you wouldn't do that," Rhiow added, with a rueful glance down at her legs. "It's hardly dignified."
"I wonder," Hhuha said, "are you getting out somehow?"
From the bedroom, a snort could be clearly heard over the laughter coming from the picturebox. "There's nowhere for her to get out but twenty stories down, Sue," the answer came. "And if she's doing that, how's she getting back?"
"I hate it when he's sensible," Hhuha muttered, holding Rhiow close again. "Well, you're okay. I'm so glad. I'll give you some of that nice tuna."
"I'll eat it," Rhiow said, "though I must be out of my mind."
But neither of them moved for a few minutes: Hhuha just held Rhiow more or less draped over her shoulder, and Rhiow just let her, and they purred at each other. Moments like this make it all worthwhile, Rhiow thought. Even the almost-getting-eaten-by-dinosaurs part. For the work she did was as much about keeping Manhattan safe for ehhif as for People, and about making it easier for wizards of all kinds to keep the planet going as it should. Wizards had kept various small and large disasters from befalling the city in the past and would do so often again; on the smallest scale, they did it every day. And the purpose, finally, was so that normal life could go on doing what it did— just trying to manage the best it could and finding what joy there was to be found along the way. Entropy was running: the heat was slowly bleeding out of the worlds, and nothing could be done to actually stop the process. But wizards could slow it down, however slightly, and make a little more time for everyone else to purr at each other in….
"You must be hungry," Hhuha said, and didn't move.
"Starving," Rhiow said, and didn't move, either.
She glanced around, her head resting on Hhuha's shoulder. Papers were all over the place again, on the living-room table and in a heap by the chair. "I'm going to shred some of those if I get a chance," Rhiow said lazily, her tail twitching a bit with the pleasant image. "I wish you'd find something else to do with your days; you so dislike what you have to do now."
"Talk talk talk," Hhuha said, having just caught the last few sounds of the sentence as a soft trill. "You are hungry, I bet. Come on."
She finally put Rhiow carefully down on the rug and went to open another can of cat food. Rhiow sat, watching it with some resignation, since her nose told her plainly that the leftover pizza was in the microwave, and there was pepperoni on it.
They always leave it there and sneak slices in the middle of the night. Would they ever notice if I just opened it one night, took a slice out, and closed it again? If I timed it right, each of them might think the other one did it….
"How much of that pizza is left?" Iaehh's voice came from the bedroom.
"About half."
"Bring me some?"
"How much?"
"About half."
"Pig."
"Controlling personality."
"Pizza in bed. Disgusting."
"Call it a lifestyle choice."
"You can damn well choose about half of about half. I get the rest."
"Forget it," Rhiow said then, with amusement and resignation, as Hhuha filled her bowl again. "It would never work… you two talk to each other too much. If this relationship were a little more dysfunctional, I'd eat a lot better, you know that?"
"There you go," Hhuha said, straightening up from the food bowl. "What a good kitty."
Rhiow set about eating the awful tuna at her best possible speed, so that she could get into the bedroom before the pizza was all gone.
* * *
Much later, both of them were snoring, and Rhiow lay at the
end of the bed, looking at the yellow venetian-blind light and thinking. In particular, she was looking at a chance group of wrinkles in the blanket at the end of the bed: they looked a little like two curves and a slash across them.
The Eye.
We've got a visionary on our hands, Rhiow thought.
Seers turned up occasionally among wizards, just as among non-wizards— though there would always be those who would argue that any seer was probably actually some kind of wizard anyway. The talent was not widespread. Wizards as a class might be more liable, by the nature of their work, to the sudden flash of insight that could be mistaken for genuine future-seeing: and to a lesser extent, they were sensitive to dreams and visions— perhaps the Whisperer, in her most benevolent mode, trying to hint at where danger might lie, since she was not allowed to warn you directly. But some few wizards sidestepped even her boundaries and saw clearly what might happen if things kept going the way they were going at present. Some did so with dreadful clarity. They tended not to last long: they were usually claws in the One's paw and (as the myth had it) usually personified the Claw That Breaks, the razor-sharp but brittle weapon that inflicts a fatal wound on the enemy, but itself does not survive the battle. Having a seer in the vicinity meant that the Lone Power would start noticing you back with unusual persistence… not a happy scenario. I had a lot of plans for this life yet, Rhiow thought. This is not good.
She thought once more of Arhu's voice crying, That's what it was. That's what it was—" 'It' what?" she said softly. And she sighed. She was going to have to press him on that point, and it was going to be painful. Rhiow was sure it had something to do with the condition in which they had first found him: she had her suspicions, but she needed confirmation from him, to tie up that particular loose string.
And there were others. One was a very small thing, but it was still bothering her.
