Duane, Diane - [Feline Wizards 3] - The Big Meow (2011)

by The Big Meow (2011)

  That would be my plan too. Ready?

  Ready!

  Hwaith inflated himself to what seemed three times any Person’s right size, and let out a hiss that sounded like an understreet steam-main breaking. The malignancies tumbled over one another to get away. As they did, Rhiow licked her nose nervously – though there was no way around what she had to do — and then cried out the last word of the spell one last time. Light flashed and sizzled blindingly all around them, far brighter than the last two times. The malignancies fell to the ground, twitching.

  Rhiow and Hwaith exchanged one quick triumphant glance over the bodies of their enemies. And then Rhiow, looking past Hwaith, realized in shock that not only the malignancies were twitching. So were the buildings all around them. “Uh – ” she said.

  Even as she spoke, the nearest one started coming down in an ugly wet slumping-into-the-street that she had no desire to be anywhere near. “Come on!” Rhiow cried, and the two of them leapt over the fallen malignancies, came down again on some of them, jumped again, hissing and spitting in disgust, and fled down the street among the still-twitching bodies of many more.

  A few seconds later, that part of Thirty-Third Street was all one puddle of shivering, blood-dark ooze. Behind them as they ran in the direction of Broadway, more of the buildings fell, and still more, in a series of slurping, liquid collapses. The nearer buildings, with more solid material in them, still shook unnervingly but eventually settled. By the time they hit Broadway, and areas representative of parts of the Silent Man that were still undamaged, everything had solidified and stood still and quiet. But that unsettling red moon still stared down Thirty-Third at them, glaring and sullen, like the eye of a Person who has been argued into silence for the moment but intends to come back to the subject later.

  Rhiow stood there a moment, looking down the street, and then shook herself all over. “That was completely disgusting, and I need a bath,” she said, aware that she probably sounded pitiful, and for the moment not caring.

  “Yes it was,” Hwaith said. “And so do I. So let’s get out of here.”

  Rhiow sighed. “But one thing first. We have to stop in Times Square.”

  “All right.”

  They walked it, not hurrying, seeing the dark city start coming back to life around them, at least in the Silent Man’s dream-image of his inner self: real ehhif walking the streets again, real traffic rolling, traffic lights changing, the brilliance of the glare of the intersection of Broadway and Eighth Avenue reasserting itself. Hwaith just walked by Rhiow, not demanding explanations or doing much of anything but look around at the surroundings and their fellow pedestrians as they went: men in fedoras and pretty women on their arms, others wearing long dark coats and furtive looks, ducking into the stairwells of below-ground apartments or meeting to whisper on streetcorners. The stores began to have lights again, the shadows crept aside out of the street to huddle in their proper places in doorways and side alleys, and finally Rhiow and Hwaith came out into the brilliance of Times Square.

  There Rhiow made her way over to the front of One Time Square, still in this time the home of the newspaper. Around it the news ticker showing nothing but periods kept making its placid way. Here, as she reached out with a string-manager’s energy detection senses into the heart of the Silent Man’s city-as-self-image, Rhiow knew she would find the conduits for the strictly pain-sensing aspects of his nervous system. Like much else in the City, they were buried under the road: she could see them there, long bundled lines, glowing with the messages they carried.

  “Bear with me a for a second,” Rhiow said to Hwaith, sat down, and closed her eyes. Once settled, she ran her consciousness down into the conduits and tried to make some choices about which ones to affect and which to leave alone. The problem was that the Silent Man’s sensorium as a whole was extraordinarily interwoven as far as pain was concerned. But then all his life’s been about sensing what’s going on with those around him – rooting out their pain and nailing it down on paper. It’s all wound up with who he is and what he does: channeling that pain…

  Nonetheless, for the sake of what he would be doing in company with them over the days to come, Rhiow did what she had to. She spoke the words in the Speech that would reset the Silent Man’s afferent nerves’ sensitivity to pain stimuli to a somewhat lower level. Finishing, she opened her eyes and saw, all around her, the glare of Times Square dimming down. Only the periods on the “zipper” sign kept their brilliance: but the rest of the place gently dulled itself down to something that resembled a brownout. The shadows that had been chased to the edges of things started to creep back.

  Rhiow was aware of Hwaith looking at her: but he didn’t say anything. She sighed. “It won’t last,” Rhiow said after a few moments. “He’ll get some relief initially, and he’ll have some more energy to call on as a result. But he’s too much about being a raw nerve, aware of everything all the time, to let it stay this way.”

  “He’ll dissolve it himself before you even go, maybe,” Hwaith said, sounding a little sad.

  Rhiow flicked one ear “yes”. “In the meantime, we’ve done what we need to,” she said. “Let’s go.” She closed her eyes again.

  *

  When she reopened them, Rhiow was shocked by how bright everything seemed. But after a few moments’ blinking she realized that the room was in almost exactly the same shade of morning twilight as she’d left it. She had been inside the Silent Man’s other self for no more than twenty minutes.

  Over by the door she spied a dark shadow against the room’s light colors: Hwaith. Listen, she said silently, so as not to awaken either the Silent Man or Sheba, how long have you been there?

  Since a little after you started, I think.

  On guard…

  Yes. Until it was obvious I was could make myself more useful elsewhere.

  Thank you.

  Rhiow jumped down off the windowsill, but came down harder than she’d intended, feeling a little faint. The noise of her landing’s thump made the Silent Man stir a little.

  She could have hissed at her own clumsiness, but that would have disturbed the Silent Man and Sheba too. Rhiow staggered a little, found her footing, headed toward the door.

  Hwaith put himself halfway through the door and held it in part-immaterial state for her. Rhiow staggered through gladly, made her way back into the living room and sat down hard in the middle of the floor, uncaring who might be there to see her. She sagged, almost woozy, and crouched down on all fours before she fell down.

  “Nasty,” Hwaith said after a moment.

  “Yes,” Rhiow said. “Yes it was.” She shook her head: her ears were still buzzing with the ugly buzzing tumor-voices.

  Then she glanced up. Hwaith had sat down by her and was looking at her with concern. “It’s all right,” she said. “Just the usual exertion. You pay more when you have to construct a wizardry on the fly.” Rhiow shook her head once more at the buzzing. “I just hope I didn’t burn out anything vital with that last flash –”

  “I doubt you did,” Hwaith said.

  Rhiow laughed helplessly. “The trouble is, it’d be hard to tell whether I destroyed something, he’s already so ripped up inside! Oh, Hwaith, it’s one thing to know that surgery isn’t so far along in this time, but with this poor ehhif, the doctors couldn’t do anything for him but literally go down his throat with a sharpened spoon and cut off the worst bits of the malignant tissue they found, and half the contents of his throat with it! All the rest of what’s killing him is still in there. The cancer’s spread everywhere in him. It’s seeded all through his lungs, it’s in his lymphatic system and getting into his liver and his bones…”

  She fell silent. “You should drink something,” Hwaith said after a moment.

  “Yes I should,” Rhiow said, and got to her feet. She felt a little better already. “Just the reaction…” she said, and headed over to the water bowl that was set out by the Neverending Buffet.

  She put her fa
ce down in the water, and the scent of it suddenly made her aware that she was ragingly thirsty. Rhiow drank for almost a minute straight, and with every gulp after a few laps thought sadly of the Silent Man’s throat, of how it now felt like a great gaping bottomless hole to him, a ruined instrument that he had once played like a virtuoso but would now never use again as it had once been used. That’s why he keeps putting all that scalding hot coffee down him, she thought: for she’d noticed with some surprise over the past couple of days how hot the Silent Man drank it. It’s the only way he can feel anything there any more except pain. Or at least it’s a pain he controls. And that’s why he eats with such gusto. He’s convincing himself that this at least is still all right. And it’s not. His gut’s so ruined by the cancer that it’s a question how much good he gets out of his food at all any more. That’s why he’s so thin…

  She shook water off her whiskers and sighed, then walked back to where Hwaith sat, feeling a little better. Rhiow sat down by him and washed her face a little. “How did you find me?” she said after a moment.

  “Well, you weren’t here, or in the spare bedroom, or up on the windowsill where you usually go, so I –”

  She gave him a look. “Hwaith.”

  Hwaith flicked an ear at her. “Sorry…” He rubbed at one ear. “I heard you.”

  “You heard me from out here? When I was in there??”

  “I told you, I have the Ear, a little.”

  “Not so little,” Rhiow said, “if you can find me inside an ehhif’s dream of his insides. Especially when they’re that complex…”

  Hwaith looked away. There was something so self-effacing and somehow weary about the way he did it that Rhiow had a sudden impulse to go over to him and lick his head a little by way of apology. A second later, she blinked at the concept: sudden impulses of that sort weren’t normally in her repertoire. Especially with someone you’re just getting to know. I’m tired. We’re all tired. And it’s only going to get worse. But he didn’t have to come in after me…

  “…You didn’t have to,” Rhiow said.

  “Oh, I know. You would have handled them — ”

  “Hwaith, I was going to say that it was a good thing you did come in after me,” Rhiow said. “Otherwise…”

  He looked up at her again. Rhiow looked at him a little sideways. “I’d probably have gotten out,” she said, “but I wouldn’t be in the great shape I am now.” And she put her whiskers right forward.

  The irony wasn’t lost on him. Hwaith’s jaw dropped in a slight smile.

  “But thank you,” she said. “And for letting me dump on you, too.”

  “Come on… you know you’re more than welcome.”

  Rhiow sighed. “It’s just that the rest of my team… They’re in my head so much of the time, Hwaith: it can’t be helped, considering what we do, what we’ve done together. But I can’t let them bear that burden too. I have to handle at least my coping myself. Otherwise we’d never get our jobs done at all.”

  Hwaith bumped her with his head: then stood up and turned away toward the buffet dishes, waving his tail. “Might be smart to have a few bites in peace before the crowd starts to arrive,” he said.

  “What?”

  He looked over his shoulder and flicked an ear at Rhiow again.

  “Really,” she said. “Well, I suppose I could eat something…”

  Rhiow followed him, thoughtful. And so it was that she’d eaten her fill, and was sitting in the middle of the empty living room washing again, before there was a bang that blew all the curtains in the room awry, and Urruah was standing there glancing around him. “Rhi! Hey, it’s a good thing you’re up. Listen, I –”

  Bang! Aufwi was standing off to one side, looking around him. “Rhiow? Oh, you’re here too, Urruah? That’s handy, because –”

  Bang! Siffha’h and Arhu were standing side by side and back to back in the middle of the room, Sif looking satisfied, Arhu looking unusually grim. “Rhi,” and “Rhiow,” they said more or less in unison. “Just wait till you hear what we found out, those ehhif are going to…”

  They fell silent, seeing that Rhiow wasn’t looking at them, but at Hwaith, sitting next to her. He flicked one ear back and forth, gazed up at the ceiling: then looked back at Rhiow.

  BANG! On the sofa by the window, Helen Walks Softly – with her hair down and wearing a very fetching long blue satin bathrobe — was sitting with her legs curled underneath her and a cup and saucer in her lap. She looked around at the assembled People and smiled the wan smile of an ehhif who hasn’t had a lot of sleep. “And here I thought I might be showing up too early,” she said.

  “Not at all,” Rhiow said. She glanced at her team. “So why don’t you all have some breakfast and tell me what you’ve found, and we’ll start working out what to do next…”

  The Big Meow: Chapter Nine

  Naturally matters were never going to go as smoothly as that. Some members of the team insisted on debriefing while they were still eating, in defiance of the etiquette of most People: and Rhiow wasn’t surprised when Urruah turned out to be the worst offender in this regard. He’d hardly had as much as half of one of the bowls of food laid out by the patio before stopping to look over his shoulder at Helen Walks Slowly, who sat finishing her coffee while the others ate. “Look at you,” he said. “Where did you den last night?”

  Siffha’h and Arhu paused in their eating just long enough to throw a look of disbelief and resignation at Urruah and each other. Helen just smiled. “Freddie put me up in a room at the Beverly Hills Hotel.”

  “All by yourself?”

  Helen laughed at his attempt at a casual tone. “What are we going to do with you?” she said. “Do you ever think about anything but sex?”

  “Food, sometimes,” Urruah said.

  Helen burst out laughing, put the cup down on a nearby coffee table and lounged back on the sofa. “You missed your calling, cousin. Or maybe your time. Here you’d fit in perfectly as a gossip columnist.” She stretched, then pulled her legs up under her again and started massaging her feet, making a face. “Heels! … but it looks like when I’m doing things for my cover story, I’m going to be wearing them most of the time.” She gave Urruah an amused look. “Freddie and I were up until late down by the pool at the hotel, sorting out what our contractual relationship was going to be and hammering out a plan of action for dealing with the studios. All in plain sight, but not where anyone could hear: the only other people down there were the late bar staff, and though they tried ever so hard, they couldn’t hear a word we were saying. Funny about that.” She waggled her eyebrows.

  Rhiow lashed her tail in amazement. “Queen among us, is there nowhere in this place where everybody’s not out to discover everyone else’s secrets?”

  Helen shook her head. “I’m sure the hotel staff don’t make so much that they mind augmenting their income by passing hot tips about the stars to those two proto-media ladies,” she said. “Anyway, we didn’t finish our discussion until, oh, it must have been three-thirty or four… and then Freddie said, ‘No point in putting you on the road so late.’ Which was considerate of him. Though I think he also doesn’t mind knowing exactly where to find me in a hurry this morning if he needs my help in sorting something out with Paramount.” Helen glanced over at Hwaith. “In aid of that, after the front desk dug this up for me –” and she lifted a little of the robe’s satin skirt, dropped it– “I followed your lead and had a word with the hotel switchboard. The things it’s heard in its time: my stars, my stars!” Her smile went wicked. “Anyway, we had a lovely chat, and after I did a little wizardly enabling, it agreed to forward any incoming calls to my cellphone. If anyone calls the room, I can gate right out of here and be back there in a hurry.” She stretched her legs out again. “Satisfied?”

  “I was just curious,” Urruah said.

  Helen raised her eyebrows. “You’re a Person. What else is new? …But after that mob scene last night, maybe you have reason to ask.” She smiled t
hat feral smile again. “Anyway, if the phone rings, I’ll need to take it. Freddie says we’re going to have a very busy day today. We’ll see about that, though, as my film career definitely takes a back seat to what we’re working on.” She glanced around. “Speaking of back seats: where’s our host?”

  “He had a late night too,” Rhiow said. “And maybe a little excitement that he wouldn’t have been expecting. Nothing next to yours, though, I’d say….”

  Rhiow was trying to sound casual about it, but she was no more successful at this than Urruah had been. Now he looked up from the bowl again, and Rhiow knew she was in trouble: anything that could make Urruah stop eating was going to be problematic. “What happened?”

  Arhu and Siffha’h still had their heads down in the bowls, but now Aufwi had stopped eating and was looking at her too. Hwaith began washing one ear. “Maybe this can wait until everyone finishes –”

  “Rhiow,” Urruah said.

  It wasn’t a tone she heard from him often. So she had no choice but to tell him what she had been up to, and how and where Hwaith had found her.

  Various shocked looks were exchanged among her team while she was getting through the tale. Rhiow did her best to ignore them. Finally Urruah, who had sat quiet by the food bowl during the whole recital, gave her an annoyed look and said, “Did you think to ask any of us along on this little jaunt??”

  Rhiow sighed. “Ruah, everyone was out, and the moment presented itself, and I took that moment. Like you’ve never misjudged a wizardry in your life. Do I have to remind you again about the Oyster Bar incident?”

  Urruah’s tail twitched. “All right,” he said. “Point taken.”

  “And that didn’t even involve anyone else’s quality-of-life issues – so keep your sense of proportion about you.”

  “Yes, O Queen.”

  Sarcasm, Rhiow thought: that’s better. “All right. Does anyone else care to take me to task for my night’s work? Last chance.”