To Visit the Queen fw-2

by Диана Дуэйн

  From the depths of reality came the feeling of divine whiskers being put forward, and the sound of tolerant laughter.

  The whole team made the commute to London the next morning to check the diagnostics and the logs, and found nothing: and they did so the next morning, and the morning after that … with no sign of any unusual ingresses or egresses at all. On the fourth day of this, Rhiow began to wonder whether the Powers had sent her team on one of those useful but temper-fraying jobs which her old mentor and teacher Ffairh would have described as "trying to herd mice at a crossroads": a lot of trouble to very little effect for a long, long time … until you lost patience and started eating the mice, which might be what the Powers had in mind in the first place. Urruah was beginning to feel the strain, and was getting short with everybody, especially Arhu. Arhu, for his own part, was getting bored.

  "He won't let me do anything," he said to Rhiow one morning as they went in to work together.

  "That's possibly because he's not sure of your level of mastery as such," Rhiow said, "and possibly because it's other People's gates we're working with, not our own. No, Arhu, listen: don't look that way. If you want to get a job done – that being the whole reason we have to keep going to London – sometimes you have to do it a little more slowly, a little more cautiously, than you otherwise would. At home, with our own gates, it's usually no big deal. If one of us makes a mistake, she gets her head smacked, we clean up the mess, and the matter stays in the family. But when you're dealing with other People's territory, things slow down. And this is their territory … be sure of that."

  "I thought you told me 'we are guardians and nothing more'," Arhu said with some annoyance.

  "That's as true of the London team as it is of us. But it's Her business to tell them that, not ours."

  They paused in front of the number-three gate, which was anchored over by the Waldorf Yard again because of track maintenance going on near its usual location. "Territory," Rhiow said, "it's a problem …

  "Yeah. Oh, Urruah said he might be late this morning. Something about the dumpster."

  "I wish he'd tell me these things," Rhiow said, and sat down in front of the gate. "How late did he think?"

  "He didn't say."

  She waved her tail, resigned. Toms … "You'd better take care of the gating, then," she said. "They're going to be wondering where we are."

  "Probably not," Arhu said, sitting up and slipping his forepaws into the control weave. "I don't think Fhrio cares one way or the other."

  "Oh, I wouldn't be so sure," Rhiow said. "He's likely enough to care … but not to show it … "

  Arhu was busy with the weave, pulling strings out and hooking them under and through one another with his claws. He was getting quick at this work, whatever Urruah might think: after a few days' practice

  with the London configuration, the pattern had become second nature to him. Or else the gate itself was beginning to answer his requirements, falling into "heart-configuration" with Arhu – a development very much to be hoped for. It was the kind of sympathy, not quite a symbiosis, which Saash had had with the Grand Central gates: a sort of mutual understanding of what needed to be done, based to be sure on a sound theoretical knowledge, but on something much more in execution. It was as if the gates had liked Saash, and wanted to cooperate with her because she liked them. If Arhu was acquiring that kind of almost-affection, Rhiow thought, there would be little limit to what he could do as a gate technician later in life, or in other lives to come, if the wizardry followed him.

  And we could use someone with that kind of basic affinity, she thought. For all my theoretical work, I don't have it: and for all Urruah's, he's more an engineer than a technician. Probably it comes of being a power source: of seeing the gate as something to be done to, rather than someone to be done with …

  Arhu stopped. "Does that look right?" he said suddenly, sounding rather confused.

  Rhiow looked over the gate-weft. The colors were running correctly, the hyperstrings all seemed to be making the correct "itch" in the air, the resonances of sound and texture were all in place. "It looks fine – "

  "It doesn't feel fine. It feels like something's come unsnagged."

  Arhu was blinking, looking a little vague. Rhiow had learned to recognize that particular danger sign. "Now," Rhiow said, "or later?"

  "I think – ' Arhu's eyes narrowed, a look of abrupt and uncomfortable concentration. This was always the most difficult part of the work for a visionary, the matter of learning to "ride" the vision rather than simply being ridden by it: though the question of which was finally master, the seer or the seen, was always one which caused most seers a certain amount of unease over their careers. "I think later. But not much later. Short term … "

  Oh wonderful, Rhiow thought. "Today? Tomorrow?"

  "What am I, some ehhif weather forecaster?" Arhu said, still squinting, with his paws all tangled up with hyperstrings. "Do you want percentages of probability too?"

  "Whatever you can come up with," Rhiow said. "And whatever idiom works for you. I'm not picky."

  "I can see the sun," Arhu said after a moment, "but I'm not sure which one it is, which day. Just a sense of things … unraveling. Something unsnags, and then everything sorts itself out. Though it smells really bad at first – "

  He blinked again, shook his ears until they rattled, and looked at Rhiow. "Gone. I hate it when it does that!"

  "Calm down, Arhu, take it easy, don't let the strings go – "

  "I wasn't going to, do you think I want the whole place to jump off into space … ?" But his ears were flat back, and he hissed softly. "Rhiow," Arhu said, sitting up still with that unkittenish perfect balance of his, "I can hear Her. I can see what She sees … just for a second. Everything together: images, thoughts in minds, lots of

  minds all together, a hundred paws' worth of places all at once … But all broken, like light in water when the wind blows. My brains won't hold a whisker's worth of it … and then it's gone. What's the use, this becoming one of the Powers, but not enough of one to be any good to anybody, or for long enough to figure it out, long enough to make a difference – !"

  Rhiow sighed and paced over to him, balanced on her hindquarters just long enough to bump her head against his. "You know it's going to be hard at first," she said, settling down again. "It's going to take so much practice, and it's going to be hard for a long time yet. The seer's talent is one of the worst ones in its way … tough to manage. But if you can stay with it … "

  "Do I have a choice?" Arhu said, and the edge of bitterness and sadness was impossible to miss. "If I don't learn it, I'll lose it

  к

  He sat back on his haunches then and said, "Never mind. At least I can still gate."

  He gave one sidewise glance at Rhiow, and gave the strings a quick pull.

  The other side of the gate flickered abruptly into black night over a white land – pale silver-and-white dust and stone with every stone's shadow laid out long and black and razorlike behind it. Over everything hung a shape that burned at first so blue that the eye refused it: then you saw the white swirls, and the shades of green and haze-brown, but the main color was blue, shining down pale on that white desolation, and Rhiow's abrupt first thought was of the shade of Auhlae's eyes.

  She gave Arhu a look. "Very cute," she said. "If you're demonstrating that you've learned to keep a gate patent when there's vacuum on the other side, I take your point. Otherwise … you know what I told you."

  "And what Urruah keeps telling me," Arhu says. "Yeah, I know … "

  Rhiow opened her mouth, then shut it again, remembering what Urruah had said about Arhu's early morning gate work the other day. And slowly she put her whiskers forward. If he was going to go, she thought, how would we stop him? And: Not so long ago, this was the kitling we were worried wasn't doing enough wizardry. He's finding his way. Let him be …

  "We've no business there today," Rhiow said, working to sound lazy about it. "Maybe later t
his week, we'll go. I'll see you off, in fact, if you'd rather do it on your own. Meanwhile, let's get going: they'll be waiting for us. Urruah will catch up."

  The look Arhu threw her was a little odd: but very featly he flipped his paws and changed the configuration of the strings again, and the view through the gate shifted to that of darkness again, but this time it was the unstarred darkness of the Underground tunnels near Tower Bridge.

  "I'll let it snap back into its default settings afterwards," Arhu said. "Urruah'll be able to pull this setting out of memory and alter it for changed time with no problem."

  "Right," Rhiow said, and stepped through: Arhu followed her.

  They made their way over to the platform where the malfunctioning London gate hung, shimmering dully in a non-patient configuration. Only Fhrio was with it at the moment, sitting by it and yawning.

  "Luck, Fhrio," Rhiow said. "Have you been waiting long?"

  "Half the night, but don't let that bother you," the orange tabby said, and tucked himself down into what Rhiow's ehhif called the "meat loaf shape.

  Rhiow threw an amused glance at Arhu, who was looking off into the darkness to avoid having Fhrio see him rolling his eyes. She felt a little sorry for him on his first outcall, having half the team they were working with turn out to be such difficult cases: but this kind of thing happened occasionally. She still thought often of one of the Brasilia team who, though a wizard of tremendous talent, was also so scarred by some old trauma that he would jump up in the air hissing any time you spoke to him before he could see you, and would come down with claws out and fur standing on end, ready to murder anyone who was standing too close. Working with him had driven her nearly insane, and as for Urruah, it had been all Rhiow could do to keep him from walking off that job every day, at the occurrence of the first jump-and-hiss. At least Fhrio wasn't quite so unnerving to work with, but Rhiow was increasingly wondering what his problem was, or, if there was no problem, why he was this way all the time.

  "No incursions, I take it," Rhiow said, sitting down in front of the gate and eyeing it thoughtfully.

  "Nothing," Fhrio said. "I almost wish for one: at least it would make sitting here a little less boring."

  She twitched her tail in agreement. "Have Auhlae or Huff been along yet today?"

  "Auhlae's home with her ehhif," Fhrio said. "He's sick or something. Huff was here earlier and then went off." Fhrio yawned. "I think probably to take a nap: he was up watching the gate all night."

  Arhu was standing behind Rhiow now, looking over her shoulder at the shimmer of light in the gate-web. She wasn't sure how much he was able to make out of its function as yet just from the configuration of the light-patterns and the juxtaposition of the various braids and bundles of hyperstrings. Reading a gate that way took time to learn.

  "It's changed since yesterday," Arhu said.

  "Of course it's changed," Fhrio said, and yawned again. "The Earth's not where it was yesterday, is it? Basic changes in spacetime coordinates show in the web as a matter of course – "

  "I don't mean that. I mean the sideslip and tesseral string bundles in the control weft have changed position slightly. And one of the sideslip sub-arrays has a string loose."

  "What?" Fhrio sat up, looked at the part of the gate-web that Arhu was staring at. "Where are you – oh. No, that's all right, this gate does that sometimes. It's a locational thing – I think it has to do with the gravitational anomaly in the substrate under the Hill. The loose ends always weave themselves back in after a few minutes: this isn't a static construct, after all, it 'breathes' a little."

  "I know, our gates do that too. But look at the way the sideslip bundle is interweaving with the hyperextensor braid – "

  Fhrio was beginning to look confused. "Yes, as I say, it does that. I don't see what the – "

  "Well, look," Arhu said, padding forward, and Rhiow gave him a Now– you-be-careful look, which he ignored. "See the way this is hanging out – shouldn't it be tucked in? I mean, it has no anchor. If you just – "

  "No, don't pull that!"

  It was too late. Arhu had already snagged a claw around the string in question, and pulled.

  The gate shimmered: a brief storm of many-colored light ran down it

  – and someone stumbled out of it. An ehhif.

  The two teams sprang back in horror as the man crashed to the concrete almost on top of them. He lay there moaning, then grew quiet.

  "Well," Arhu said, his eyes big with surprise and his voice full of badly hidden satisfaction, "you wanted it to fail the same way? There you go."

  Fhrio gave Arhu a look suggesting that he would be seeing him later, outside the line of business.

  "He's got a point, Fhrio," Rhiow said hurriedly. "You said you wished for an incursion … and a wizard has to watch what he wishes for. The Universe is listening … "

  Fhrio gave her an annoyed look, but then almost visibly let the mood go, aware that they had more important issues to deal with. They all bent down together over the sprawled ehhif: Fhrio patted him gently on the face with one paw. There was no response. "Unconscious … "

  "Not for long, I think."

  "But, great Queen of us all, where did he spring from?" Fhrio said.

  "From his clothes, I'd say not our time, that much is certain," Rhiow said. "And no time close to it. I'm no expert on ehhif styles, but this looks more like what tom-ehhif wear for formal wear in our time. It used to be everyday clothing once, though, so Urruah told me – "

  The ehhif was mostly in black: long narrow trousers, a white shirt with a peculiar cloth wrapped around the neck and tucked into the shirt's collar: then a sort of short close coat that came down only to the waist, and over that a bigger coat, dark again. The ehhif himself was tall, and fair-furred, and had a lot more fur around the face than was popular these days: he might have been in middle age.

  "He's stopped breathing – " Fhrio said suddenly.

  Rhiow looked at him more closely. "It might just be a sigh," she said. "But just in case, we'd better spell-fence him. He's going to need support spelling anyway when he wakes up – "

  She started walking the beginning of a wizard's circle around the ehhif and the gate together. Arhu had dropped the string he had pulled and was looking off down the old train runnel. "Now what in the Dam's name," said a voice from a little distance down the tunnel, and a second later Auhlae jumped up onto the platform, with Siffha'h in tow. Arhu looked at her, then turned and sat down hurriedly and began to wash.

  "Auhlae," Fhrio said, "where's Huff?"

  "He'll be along shortly," she said, walking along to the ehhif and peering at him. "Iau's name," Auhlae said, "it's another one."

  "Yes," Fhrio said, and said nothing more for the moment: but Rhiow could hear trouble in his voice. She ignored it for the moment. "Has he started breathing again?"

  Auhlae looked closely at him, and put her face down close to the ehhif s, feeling for breath. "None at the moment. Siffha'h," she said. "When Rhiow finishes, put some power into her circle, this poor ehhif is going to need it. I think he's in shock."

  "Doesn't surprise me," Siffha'h said, coming over to look at the circle Rhiow was building as she paced and assembled the spell in her mind. "Pretty standard," she said. "Which part do you want me to fuel first?"

  "The main strand and the life-support part," Rhiow said. "I want to feel if there's anything actually wrong with his body before we start interfering." She completed the circle, tying the "wizard's knot" in the air with a flirt of her tail: pale fire followed it briefly and died away – normally she would have preferred to see her guidelines in visible light, but the appearance of strange fires from nowhere was not likely to do this poor ehhif any good when he became conscious.

  "Now then – " she said. The basic spell-circle lay traced in ghost lines on the concrete around the ehhif. Rhiow now made one more turn around it, her paws pressing into the circle the graphic forms of those words of the Speech which Rhiow was assembling in her mind, t
he words which would control the function of the spell. One by one they appeared in graceful ghost curves and arabesques interwoven around the main curve of the circle, like vines twining around a support, until the last few words rooted themselves into the wizard's knot and became one with it.

  "Ready," she said. Siffha'h looked the circle over, found the power– supply access point and stood on it: the circle flared for just a second with power, then damped down again.

  Rhiow, still standing on the control point of the circle at the wizard's knot, nearly jumped off it at the abrupt access of power into the spell, and secondarily, into her. It was partly the suddenness of its inrush, and partly the sheer volume of it, and the unusual taste of it when it came – mostly the taste of Siffha'h's mind: young and fierce and bold, surprisingly so for such a young queen, with a great sense of potential unused and potential still developing, and behind everything, driving it all, some huge and dimly-perceived desire. Rhiow shied away from any attempt to look more closely at that – it was none of her business – but was impressed by it all the same. This young queen was going to be quite something as she grew into more certainty about her work and her life.

  "That enough to work with for the moment?" Siffha'h said.

  "For several hours, if you ask me," Rhiow said, impressed: "Thanks, cousin!" She turned her attention to the spell. She had no proper name for the ehhif, and so had used one of the species-generic terms and an indicator for his gender: now her mind ran down through that connection to his, and felt about gingerly in the ehhif's mind. The part of his brain that ran breathing and blood pressure and other functions was undamaged: but the emotional shock had thrown his blood chemistry badly out of kilter, and left him in a "sigh" that was much more prolonged than the usual fifteen seconds. That chemistry was getting worse as she watched, but fortunately the problem was a simple one, already partially rectified. Rhiow cured it by increasing the acidity of his blood ever so slightly, a process already under way, and the automatic response to such an increase took over, so that the ehhif gasped, and then started to breathe normally again.