by Diane Duane
They were quiet for a moment. "As to lives," Rhiow said then, "I don't think all that much about my last ones. Most of us don't, I suspect, after the first few, when the novelty of the change wears off. The really persistent memories— big mistakes, great sorrows or joys— they intrude sometimes. I don't go digging. What you stumble across, from day to day, you're usually meant to find for some reason. But caching memories is as sick as caching food, for one of our People. Better to live now, and use the memories, when they come to mind, as a way to keep from making the same mistakes all over again. Use the past as a guide, not a fence."
"The past…" He looked out into the golden light of the concourse, toward the sunlight spilling through the south windows. "I don't remember much of mine."
"You don't have to tell me."
"I do," Arhu said, somewhat painfully. "You don't trust me."
There was no answer to that, not right now: and no question but that he was seeing at least some things with surprising clarity. "Arhu," Rhiow said, "it's just that if your gift is seeing… and it looks that way… you have to try to manage it, use it… and especially, you have to try to accept what there is to see about yourself, when it comes up for viewing. You are the eye through which you see. If the eye is clouded, all the other visions will be, too… and at this dangerous time in your life, if you don't do your best to see clearly, you won't survive."
He would not look at her.
He sees something, Rhiow thought. Something in his own future, I bet. And he thinks that if he doesn't talk about it, it won't happen….
"For the time being, you just do the best you can," Rhiow said at last. "Though I admit I'd be happier if I knew you were coming to some kind of terms with your Oath."
"I said the words," Arhu said after a little while.
"Yes. But will you hold by them?"
"Why wouldn't I?" The voice was completely flat.
Rhiow swung her tail gently from side to side. "Arhu, do you know what entropy is?"
He paused a moment, listening. "Things run down," he said finally. "Stuff dies. Everything dies."
"Yes."
"But it wasn't meant to… not at first."
"No," Rhiow said. "Things got complicated. That's the story of the worlds in one bowl. All the rest of the history of all the worlds there are, has been about the issue of resolving that complication. It will take until the end of the worlds to do it. Our People have their part to play in that resolution. There will be a lot of fighting… so if you like that kind of thing, you're in the right place."
"I wasn't yesterday," he said bitterly. "I couldn't have fought anything. I was fooling myself."
So that much self-vision is in play, whether he thinks so or not, Rhiow thought. "In the strictly physical sense, maybe," Rhiow said. "But nonetheless, you said what you saw. You tried to warn us. You may have given Saash that little impetus she needed to hurry and finish what she had to do before the saurians came in. That's worthwhile, even that little help. You struck your first blow."
"I don't know if I even did it on purpose," Arhu said.
"It doesn't matter," Rhiow said. "The result matters. We got out alive… and for a while, there was no way to tell whether we would or not. So, by and large, your presence yesterday made a difference."
She stood up, stretched, let out a big yawn. "Let's get a little more concrete," Rhiow said. "Anyway, I want to have a look at that track."
Together they walked through the concourse, slipping to one side or another to avoid the ehhif, and made their way down to the platform for Track 30. A repetitive clanking noise was coming from a little ways down in the darkness, and Rhiow and Arhu paused at the platform's end to watch the workmen, in their fluorescent reflective vests and hard hats, working on something on the ground, which at the moment was completely obscured by all of them standing around it, watching.
Rhiow threw a glance over at the gate, which was visible enough to her and Arhu if not to the workmen; the patterns of color sheening down it said that it was back to normal again. "Good," she said. "And it looks like that track's almost ready to go back into service. Come on," she said, and hopped down off the platform, onto the track bed.
Arhu was slightly uneasy about following her, but after a moment he came along. She led him carefully around the workmen, past the end of Tower A, and then back down in the direction from which they had first come, but this time at an angle, down toward the East Yard, where trains were pulled in for short-term storage during the morning and evening rush hours. She was not headed for the yard itself, but for a fire exit near the north side of Tower C. Its heavy steel door was shut; she glanced over at Arhu. "Down here," she said, and put a paw into the metal.
Arhu hesitated for a moment. "Come on, you did it just fine the other night," Rhiow said.
"Yeah, but I wasn't thinking about it."
"Just remember, it's mostly empty space. You're mostly empty space. Just work the solid parts around each other…"
Rhiow walked through the door. After a moment Arhu followed, with surprising smoothness. "Nice," Rhiow said, as they went down the stairs together. The light here was dim even by cat standards, and Rhiow didn't hurry— there was always the chance you might run into someone or something you hadn't heard on the way down.
At the bottom of the fire exit, they walked through the door there and came out on the lower track level, on another platform, the longest one to be seen on this level. More fluorescent lights ran right down its length toward a low dark mass of machinery at the platform's end; electric carts and manually powered ones stood waiting here and there. "The tracks on this side are primarily for moving packages and light freight to and from the trains," Rhiow said; "bringing in supplies and equipment for the station, that kind of thing. But mostly that kind of traffic takes place during the evening or late at night. In the daytime, this area doesn't get quite so much official use… and so others move in."
Arhu looked alarmed. "What kind of 'others'?"
"You'll see."
They walked northward along the platform to the point where it stopped, across from a sort of concrete-lined bay in the eastern wall. Rhiow jumped down from the platform and crossed the track to the right of it. "This track runs in a big loop," she said, "around the terminal ends of the main tracks and out the other side. Not a place to linger: it's busy night and day. But things are a little quieter up this way."
She ducked into the bay and to the left, pausing to let her eyes adjust— it was much darker down here than out in the cavernous underground of the main lower track area, with all its lines of fluorescents and the occasional light shining out the windows of workshops and locker rooms. Behind her, Arhu stared into the long dark passage. Huge wheels wrapped full of fire hose, and mated to more low, blocky-looking machines, were bolted into the walls, from which also protruded big brass nozzles of the kind to which fire equipment would be fastened. A faint smell of steam came drifting from the end of the corridor, where it could be seen to meet another passage, darker still.
"What is this? And what's that?" Arhu whispered, staring down the dark hallway. For, hunched far down the length of it, against one of the low dark machines, something moved… shifted, and looked at them out of eyes that eerily caught the light coming from behind them.
"It's a storage area," Rhiow said. "We're under Forty-eighth Street here; this is where they keep the fire pumps. As for what it is—"
She walked down into the darkness. Very slowly, she could hear Arhu coming up behind, his pads making little noise on the damp concrete. The steam smell got stronger. Finally she paused by the spot from which those strange eyes had looked down the hallway at them. It seemed at first to be a heap of crazily folded cardboard, and under that a pile of old, stained clothing. But then you saw, under another piece of folded cardboard from a liquor store box, the grimy, hairy face, and the eyes, bizarrely blue. From under the cardboard, a hand reached out and stroked Rhiow's head.
"Hunt's luck, Rosie," Rhiow said, and sat down besid
e him.
"Luck Reeoow you, got no luck today," Rosie said. Except that he didn't say it in ehhif. He said, "Aihhah ueeur Rieeeow hanh ur-t hah hah'iih eeiaie…."
Arhu, who had slowly come up beside her, stared in complete astonishment. "He speaks our language!"
"Yes," Rhiow said, taking a moment to scrub a bit of fallen soot out of her eye: solid particulates from the train exhausts tended to cling to the ceiling over here because of the steam. "And his accent's pretty fair, if you give him a little credit for the mangled vowels, the way he shortens the aspirants, and the 'shouting.' The syntax needs work, though. Rosie, excuse me for talking about you to your face. This is Arhu."
"Hunt's luck, Arhu," Rosie said, and reached out a grubby hand.
Arhu sat down just out of range, looking even more shocked than he had when the Children of the Serpent burst through into the catenary cavern the night before.
"I don't know if Arhu is much for being petted, Rosie," Rhiow said, and tucked herself down into a comfortable meatloaf shape. "He's new around here. Say hello, Arhu."
"Uh, hunt's luck, Rosie," Arhu said, still staring.
"Luck food not great stomach noise scary," Rosie said sadly, settling back into his nest of cardboard and old clothes. All around him, under the cardboard, were piled plastic shopping bags stuffed full of more clothes, and rags, and empty fast food containers; he nestled among them, arms wrapped around his knees, sitting content, if a little mournful-looking, against the purring warmth of the compressor-pump that would service the fire hose coiled above him.
Arhu couldn't take his eyes off the ehhif. "Why is he down here?" he whispered.
"Alalal neihuri mejhruieha lahei fenahawaha," Rosie said, in a resigned tone of voice. Arhu looked at Rhiow, stuck about halfway between fear and complete confusion.
"Rosie speaks a lot of languages, sometimes mixed together," Rhiow said, "and I have to confess that some of them don't make any sense even when I listen to them with a wizard's ear, in the Speech; so some of what he says may be nonsense. But not all. Rosie," she said, "I missed that one, would you try it again?"
Rosie spent a moment's concentration, his eyes narrowing with the effort, and then said, "Short den full hai'hauissh police clean up."
"Ah," Rhiow said. "There was a big meeting of important people in town, a 'convention,' " she said to Arhu, "and the cops have stuffed all the shelters, the temporary dens, full of homeless people, so they won't make the streets look bad. Rosie must have got to the shelter too late to get a place, huh Rosie?"
"Uh huh."
" 'Homeless—' " Arhu said.
"We'd say 'denless.' It's not like 'nonaligned,' though; most ehhif don't like to wander, though there are exceptions. Rosie, what have you had to eat since you came down here? Have you had water?"
"Hot cloud lailihe ruhaith memeze pan airindagha."
"He's sshai-sau," Arhu said.
"Maybe, but he can speak cat, too," Rhiow said, "which makes him saner than most ehhif from the first pounce. You've got a pan down there in the steam tunnel, is that it, Rosie? You're catching the condensation from the pipes?"
"Yeah."
"What about food? Have you eaten today?"
Rosie looked at Rhiow sadly, then shook his head. "Shihh," he said.
"Rats," said Rhiow, and hissed very softly under her breath. "He knows the smell of food would bring them. Rosie, I'm going to bring you some food later. I can't bring much: they'll have to see me, upstairs, when I take it."
There was a brief pause, and then Rosie said, with profound affection: "Nice kitty."
Arhu turned away. "So this is one of the the People-eating ehhif I heard so much about," he said. There was no deciphering his tone. Embarrassment? Loathing?
"He's one of many who come and go through these tunnels," Rhiow said. "Some of them are sick, or can't get food, or don't have anywhere to live, or else they're running away, hiding from someone who hurt them. They come and stay awhile, until the transit police or the Terminal people make them go somewhere else. There are People too, who drift in and out of here… many fewer of them than there used to be. This place isn't very safe for our kind anymore… partly because of the Terminal people being a lot tougher about who stays down here. But partly because of the rats. They're bigger than they used to be, and meaner, and a lot smarter. Rosie," Rhiow said, "how much have the rats been bothering you?"
Rosie shook his head, and cardboard rustled all around him. "Nicht nacht night I go up gotta friend rat dog, dog, dog, bit me good, no more, not at night…"
"Rats bad at night," Arhu said suddenly.
Rhiow gave him an approving look, but also bent near him and said, too softly for an ehhif to hear, "Speak normally to him. You're doing him no kindness by speaking kitten."
"Yes bad, heard them bad, loud, not two nights ago, three," Rosie said, his voice flat, but his face betrayed the alarm he had felt. "Smelled them, smelled the cold things—" There was a sudden, rather alarming sniffing noise from under the cardboard, and Rosie's eyes abruptly vanished under the awning of cardboard, huddled against a sleeve that appeared to have about twenty more sleeves layered underneath it, alternately with layers of ancient newspaper. Rhiow caught a glimpse of a familiar movement under the bottom-most layer that made her itch as if she had suddenly inherited Saash's skin.
The sniffing continued, and Arhu stared at Rosie and actually stepped a little closer, wide-eyed. The cardboard spasmed up and down, and a little sound, huh, huh, huh, came from inside it. "Is he sick?" Arhu said.
"Of course he's sick," Rhiow muttered. "Ehhif aren't supposed to live this way. He's hungry, he's got bugs, he keeps getting diseases. But that's not the problem. He's sad. Or maybe afraid. That's 'crying,' that's what they do instead of yowl. Water comes out of their eyes. It makes them ashamed when they do that. Don't ask me why."
She turned away and started to wash, waiting for Rosie to master himself. When the sobbing stopped, Rhiow turned back to him and said, "Did you see them come through here? Did they hurt you? I can't tell by smell, Rosie: it's your clothes."
The cardboard moved from side to side: underneath it, eyes gleamed. "They went by," he said, very softly, after a little while.
"Did you see where they came from?" Rhiow said.
The head shook again.
"Which 'cold things,' Rosie?" Rhiow said.
"They roar… in the dark…"
Rhiow sighed. This was a familiar theme with Rosie: though he would keep coming down here to hide, trains frightened him badly, and he seemed to have a delusion that if they could, they would get off the tracks and come after him. When life occasionally seemed to ratify this belief— as when a train derailed near enough for him to see, on Track 110— Rosie vanished for weeks at a time, and Rhiow worried about him even more than she did usually.
"All right, Rosie," she said. "You stay here a little while. I'll come back with something for you, and I'll have a word with the rats… they won't come while you eat. Will you go back to the shelter after the convention's done?"
Rosie muttered a little under his breath, and then said, "Airaha nuzusesei lazeira."
"Once more, please?"
"Try to. No purr not long tired lie down not get up."
Rhiow licked her nose; she caught all too clearly the ehhif's sense of weariness and fear. "We have got to get you some more verbs," she said, "or adjectives, or something. Never mind. I'll be back soon, Rosie."
She turned and hurried away, thinking hard about Rosie's clothes, and putting together a familiar short description of them in her head, in the Speech, and of what she wanted to happen to them, and what was inside them. "Come on, Arhu. You don't want to be too close to him in the next few seconds."
"Why? What's the matter? What's he going to—"
Well down the hallway, Rhiow paused and looked back. In this lighting, it would have taken a cat's eyes to see what she and Arhu could: the revolting little multiple-branched river of body lice making their way in haste out of
Rosie's clothes, and pouring themselves very hurriedly out every available opening, out from under the cardboard and out across the floor, where they pitched themselves down a drain and went looking for other prey.
"I wonder if they like rat?" Rhiow said, and smiled, showing her teeth.
She loped back out of the corridor, with Arhu coming close behind her, and together they made their way back to the fire exit.
"But that," she said softly to Arhu, turning to look at him just before she slipped ahead of him through the metal of the door, "was entropy."
* * *
Out in the concourse again, the air seemed much fresher than it had a right to in an enclosed space where diesel fumes so often came drifting out of the track areas; and the sunlight pouring through the windows was doubly welcome. Rhiow paced along up the staircase to the Vanderbilt Avenue entrance; sidled again, she and Arhu jumped up on the cream marble colonnade railing and walked along it to where they could perch directly over the big escalators going up into the MetLife building. There Rhiow started a brief wash, a real one this time.
"That was completely disgusting," Arhu said, staring out and down at the shining brass of the information kiosk in the middle of the concourse floor.
"What? The lice? I guess so. But I always do that when I see him. It's a little thing. Can't you imagine how he must have felt?"
"I can imagine it right now," Arhu said with revulsion, sat down, and started scratching as if he too had had Saash's pelt wished on him.
"He's a sad case," Rhiow said. "One of many. The ehhif would say that he fell through the safety net." She stopped washing, sighed again: Rosie's sadness was sometimes contagious. "When we're not minding the gates… we try to spread our own net to cushion the fall for a few of those who fall through. People… ehhif… whoever. We take care of this place, and since they're part of it for a while… we take care of them too."
"Why bother?" Arhu burst out. "It won't make a difference! It won't stop the way things are!"
"It will," Rhiow said. "Someday… though no one knows when. This is the Fight, the battle under the Tree: don't you see that? The Old Tom fought it once, and died fighting, and came back with the Queen's help and won it after he'd already lost. All these fights are the Fight. Stand back, do nothing, and you are the Old Serpent. And it's easy to do that here." She looked around at the place full of hurrying people, most of them studiously ignoring one another. "Here especially. Ehhif kill each other in the street every day for money, or food, or just for fun, and others of them don't lift a paw to help, just keep walking when it happens. People do it, too. Hauissh goes deadly, toms murder kittens for fun rather than just because their bodies tell them to…. The habit of doing nothing or of cruelty, believing the worst about ourselves, gets hard to break. You meet People like that every day. It's in the Meditation: ask the Whisperer. But you don't have to be the way they are. Wizards are for the purpose of breaking the habit… or not having it in the first place. It's disgusting, sometimes, yes. You should have tasted yourself when we found you."
