The Big Meow

by Diane Duane

  “It’s all right,” Ray said, “it’s all right…” He was rocking her a little, stroking her hair and trying to soothe her.

  Watching this, the cop’s expression let go a little of its previous scorn: he started to look more kindly, though annoyed. “You want my advice, lady,” he said, “lay off the sauce. Don’t think I didn’t see the spread downstairs. Had to be enough booze to float the Queen Mary in.” He turned around and, no longer seeming inclined to use his annoyance on Dolores, pointed it at the people in the doorway and the hallway instead. “Okay, what’re the rest of you doing? Come on, nothing to see here, let the lady have some air, you’d think you wanted to see a corpse or something!”

  The shocked expressions and their owners backed away from the door as the cop headed for it. “Don’t know what’s the matter with you folks,” he said as he pushed through the door and out into the hall. “What I want to know now is, who called us and reported a dead person when there wasn’t one? Hah? Ever heard of being charged for wasting police time? Hah?”

  The increasingly loud sound of footsteps out in the hall suggested that people were starting to leave the area quickly, before someone in a uniform started asking the question of specific persons rather than the region at large. Shortly there was no one left in the room but Helen, Ray and Dolores, and the four unseen People.

  “Come on, let’s get you up,” Helen said. She took one of Dolores’s arms: Ray took the other. Between them they pulled Dolores to her feet. She staggered a little, then leaned against the edge of the counter with the sinks, getting her breath.

  “I can’t thank you enough, Miss,” Ray said, “Miss – “

  “Just call me Helen.” She smiled at Ray, then turned her attention back to Dolores. “Miss, are you all right now?”

  Dolores had turned herself around and was looking at herself in the mirror. A wan, sad sort of look it was, hopeless and helpless, as if the world had betrayed her one more time. “I think so,” she said, looking at Helen in the mirror. “But I feel so…so…” She shook her head.

  “It’s all right,” Helen said, and turned away.

  “Oh, but it’s not!” Dolores said. It wasn’t Helen she was saying it to, though, but Ray: she turned to him, clung to him. “You know what’s going to happen now! This is going to be all over the magazines next week. Or on that horrible radio show of Parsons’. How Dolores Canton can’t hold her liquor, how I passed out so cold that everybody thought I was dead, and the police were called, and…” She gulped as if something horrible had just occurred to her. “There are even going to be people who’ll claim this was some kind of publicity stunt to get my career going again. Oh, Ray, what studio’s going to hire me now? What am I going to do — ?”

  “You’re going to do exactly as we agreed,” he said softly into her ear. “We’ll go to that meeting like we planned…and things like this are going to stop happening to you. Okay? Okay. Just trust me, Dolores. Come on, I’ll walk you downstairs and we’ll get your wrap.”

  “You mean you’re not afraid to be seen with me after this? Oh, Ray, what if they — ”

  “They won’t. Of course I’m not afraid. Now come on, darling. – Yes, all right, you’re a little wobbly. It’ll pass. Too much excitement, and okay, maybe one glass of wine too many – “

  They paused, for suddenly standing there in the doorway was Elwin Dagenham, actually wringing his hands in distress as his gaze took it all in, especially the scattered pills. “Oh, Miss Canton, are you – did you – “

  “I’m all right,” she said. “No, truly, Mr. Dagenham. I’m fine. I’ll be going now.”

  “It’s all right, you don’t have to do that – “

  “I do,” Dolores said. “I’m sorry. Ray, please – “

  “Yes, all right,” Ray said. He nodded at Helen and walked Dolores slowly out of the room, murmuring to her as they went. Just for a moment, as he went out, Rhiow saw a glance pass between him and Dagenham: a strangely neutral look, as of people who mean to say something to each other later on. Out in the hall, the last few people lingering there stared at Ray and Dolores, watching them, and then hurried away in various directions, whispering. But Dagenham stood there still, his glance darting nervously around the bathroom.

  Rhiow ignored him for the moment, coming out from behind the toilet. “Arhu,” she said, “if you can’t See, you can hear. Follow them. Listen to them. We have to know just when and where that meeting is. Go home with them if you have to, but find out.”

  He flirted his tail “yes” and headed for the door. “Sif?”

  “With you,” Siffha’h said, and went after him.

  Watching Ray and Dolores go out, under his breath Urruah said, “It’s a shame that you didn’t have time to ‘tailor’ Dolores’s cure a little more.”

  Rhiow looked at him. “What? How?”

  Hwaith, sitting next to Urruah and peering out into the room, now glanced at Urruah and flicked an ear in agreement. “So that she’d have come out of this sick enough to have to spend a night or two in the hospital,” Hwaith said, “and couldn’t make it to this ‘meeting’ they’re talking about.”

  Rhiow considered what he was saying and then lashed her tail “no”. “There wasn’t time for that kind of tweaking,” she said. “Though I understand your concern — ”

  Helen meanwhile had turned to the mirror as Ray and Dolores went out and was apparently intent on adjusting her hair, not that Rhiow could see that it particularly needed any adjusting. Dagenham was looking at her, and Helen was coolly failing to notice the look without actually ignoring it: a delicate business, one worthy of a Person.

  “Miss, uh, Walks — Walker – ?”

  Helen looked at him at last. “I’d like to thank you,” Dagenham said. “That could have been very – uncomfortable for Miss Canton.”

  “I’m sure she just had a little too much heat,” Helen said, “a little too much excitement. There are so many … attentive people downstairs.” She allowed her smile to warm a few degrees. “Some of them very attentive indeed.”

  “Yes, thank you, that’s partly why I’m still here – ” When I really need to be downstairs talking to the police? Rhiow thought to herself. Yeah, I just bet. “There are some gentlemen downstairs who very much want to talk to you before you leave. One of the vice-presidents from Goldwyn, and the casting director from Paramount – “

  Helen’s eyes widened just slightly. One above us, what now? she said silently in the Speech.

  As if I know? Rhiow said. On a night like this, when everything’s happening at once? Ride the moment, cousin!

  “Oh dear,” Helen said, “I don’t know what they’ve said to you, but I couldn’t possibly – “

  “Miss Walker,” Dagenham said, coming into the room and actually reaching out and grabbing one of Helen’s hands. She started. “Please. I promised them you’d talk to them before you left. Just talk to them, that’s all. Oh, please!”

  The desperate urgency in his voice was very strange. But then Rhiow thought about it, considering what kind of local political capital a climber in these particular show-business regions could make of the introduction, the “discovery”, of some new starlet. And what’s in it for him after word gets around that the ‘new starlet’ got her big break at one of his parties? He’s more sought-after than ever: every girl in town wants to get in here. Who benefits? Not him directly. He doesn’t look the type — But then Rhiow stopped herself. Whisperer dear, listen to me, I’m spending time speculating about some ehhif’s chances of sexual success! Sif’s right, it’s too perverse —!

  “Well,” Helen said after a moment. “If it’s just to talk to them – ” She flicked a glance into the mirror at where Rhiow, Urruah and Hwaith were sitting. And then what? What happens when one of them offers me a contract?

  Urruah flicked an ear at her. Hire an agent?

  Oh, thanks a lot!

  Go on, Rhiow said. There are some other things we can be looking into. And we’ll check on the
Silent Man in the meantime.

  “Please, Miss Walker!” Dagenham said. “They’re not used to being kept waiting – “

  Helen smiled into the mirror. “Then perhaps it’s as well they are,” she said, “for a few minutes at least. If they’re thinking I’m something out of the ordinary, perhaps there’s no harm in reinforcing the impression.” She straightened, turned away from the mirror. “Shall we?”

  Dagenham practically fled the bathroom, hurrying down the hall. Helen threw a glance over her shoulder at the three People, then headed out after him.

  Urruah, Rhiow and Hwaith came out into the room and all stretched: being cramped up into that little space behind the toilet had left them all feeling a bit tight in the joints, psychically if not physically. “Interesting development,” Hwaith said, glancing around and wrinkling his nose at the many ehhif-scents still lingering in the hot little room.

  “Not half as interesting as the one that probably brought poor Dolores here,” Rhiow said as she headed for the door and glanced down the hall in Helen’s wake. The hallway was empty; Helen and Dagenham had gone straight downstairs. “Take a moment, hear it as the Whisperer heard it with me – “

  Urruah and Hwaith both went silent as they all headed down the stairs, keeping carefully to one side in case any ehhif came up. But the hallways in this side of the house were now very quiet – whatever ehhif had been here had cleared out in a hurry, most likely with the arrival of the police. Halfway down the stairs, as they turned at the landing, Hwaith looked over at Rhiow, and she wasn’t entirely surprised to see him bristling. “Are you thinking what I am?” he said. “That these ehhif are dabbling in what their kind call black magic?”

  She switched her tail as she headed down the second flight of stairs, a tense “yes”. “It was so cunningly couched,” Rhiow said. “It’d be easy for a careless listener to think they were hearing somebody talk about one of the Powers that Be — ”

  Urruah’s eyes were narrow as they came down onto the ground floor level. “Ugly,” he said. “The Strong Ones’, my tail — it’s the Lone One’s jackals they’re talking about!”

  “Yes,” Rhiow said. “Its hangers-on, the decayed entities that suck and tear at the edges of life. They always love it when some poor deluded bunch of ehhif get suckered into thinking they’re ‘Higher Forces’ that can be called and commanded to make their lives work. No good ever comes of it!”

  She was bristling too now, and it took some effort for Rhiow to calm herself. “Sorry,” she said to Hwaith. “We’ve had run-ins with such ehhif before. They’re always looking for dark places to make contact with sa’Rraah’s jackals. Too often they wind up down in the train tunnels.”

  “Some of them have died of their meddling down there,” Urruah said. “Other ehhif have thought they’d fallen foul of the trains. It would’ve been lovely if it’d been that simple. Or that clean.” His tail was lashing. “But I’m thinking about something else. ‘The Great Old One’ – “

  “Yes,” Rhiow said. “The Dark Lady’s friend?”

  “I suppose,” Hwaith said, “the lesser hatreds wouldn’t mind latching onto a greater one, if they thought it meant a better feed…”

  Rhiow growled a little in her throat at that. It had never occurred to her to think of sa’Rraah as the lesser of two evils. Queen Iau’s dark daughter was Entropy’s mistress and inventor, mother of the love of pain and death, heart of all the things wrong with this universe. But now, she thought, there are more universes than ours to think of. A whole different sheaf, perhaps. Where other gods work and move…

  The Whisperer was silent in the back of her mind: unusually so. It’s strange, she thought: we tend to think of the Queen as the ruler of everything. But it seems there are boundaries even to Her power, for the Dark Lady’s friend seems to come from beyond them. And then…what’s beyond that?

  Silence still from the Whisperer as they threaded through the corridors that led back to the parts of the house where the party was still going on. Rhiow’s tail was twitching with unease. Arhu, she said silently, what news?

  They’re on the way home, he said. We’re in the back seat of their car.

  Any useful conversation as yet?

  Nothing new, Arhu said. She’s arguing with him a little. Doesn’t really want to do what he’s suggesting – it’s making her uneasy.

  He’s not letting it lie, though, Siffha’h said. Keeps telling her that the Strong Ones are the answer to all her problems. Rhiow could feel the fur lifting along Sif’s back in revulsion. He’ll wear her down again, especially in the shape she’s in at the moment.

  Rhiow flicked an ear in unhappy agreement as they came out into the front hall, all still sidled, and crowded off to one side of the doorway to eye the crowd gathered there. Get that date and time! she said. And especially the place. If we can get there and check the spot where they’re meeting beforehand, it may be useful.

  Leave it to us, Arhu said.

  The front hall was full of ehhif gossiping away at high speed. One of the cops was actually still standing there with a drink in his hand, surrounded by people talking at him, and apparently much flattered by the attention. Urruah looked at this in surprise. “Oh well,” he said, “a different time, after all – “ He waved his tail in bemusement as they headed through into the room where the band was still playing.

  This room too was still full, though not many people were dancing now: most of them were gathered into knots of gossip and increasingly raucous drinking, and the band was playing with the resigned air of men trying to pretend that there was actually still someone listening to what they did. The Silent Man was where they had left him, listening to something Walter Winchell was saying: but his eyes were on Helen Walks Softly, who was off to one side of the room by the French doors, surrounded by a group of four men variously dressed in tuxedos or dark suits. One of them, younger than all the rest, slim and dark with a narrow, thoughtful face, was standing by Helen in a pose that to Rhiow somehow looked strangely proprietary. Behind them, trying not to hover too closely, Elwin Dagenham was nonetheless in a position to hear and see everything that was going on. Helen overtopped all the men around her by at least a head, and as the sidled People headed toward her, she threw them a swift glance of acknowledgement over her audience’s heads.

  As they got within hearing range over the blare of the dance band, one of the ehhif, a little round man with little round glasses, was saying to Helen. “And, uh, Miss Walker… as for your other skills… can you perhaps act?”

  Helen merely bowed her head a little – he was considerably shorter than she – drooped her eyelids slightly, and looked at him from under her brows, allowing a curve of smile to show and slowly grow. “Who knows,” she said, “I might be doing it right now.”

  All three of the older men sucked their breaths in at the range of sultry and tempting implications that were suddenly lurking under the surface of Helen’s voice. Reading their reactions, the slim young man acquired a lopsided and somewhat mercenary smile that vanished a second later.

  Rhiow glanced over at Urruah and Hwaith. “I suspect this might take a few minutes yet,” she said, putting her whiskers forward. “Let’s go on outside.”

  They strolled out through the French doors. Even out here on the patio there were party guests were drinking and talking like mad, and a few determined dancers holding one another in the shadows and swaying together to the slightly distanced music. “Plainly it takes more than a guest collapsing and the cops showing up looking for a murder to shift this bunch,” Urruah said as they headed over to the edge of the patio and sat down under a table surrounded by some deck chairs near the pool. “You wonder how big an emergency you’d have to set off to get them to take notice for more than a few minutes…”

  Rhiow gave him a look. “Don’t get any ideas,” she said, for Urruah was getting one of those wicked looks in his eye. “We’ve got questions to answer right now. Particularly, just who called the police? Besides someone w
ho wasn’t in the bathroom or anywhere near Dolores, as far as we can tell – but was also sure there was a body upstairs.”

  “If ‘lady’ is the word we’re looking for,” Urruah said, sounding very dry. “I think I know who you suspect.”

  “Suspicion is all we’ve got at the moment,” Rhiow said. “I’m not going to do the Lone One’s work for It by accusing someone without evidence.”

  Hwaith stood there waving his tail for a moment. “Well, there are ways around this problem,” he said. “I’ll go have a word with the phone.”

  Urruah looked at him in confusion. “What?” he said. “It’s 1946, you don’t have caller ID yet – “

  “What’s caller ID?” said Hwaith. “The phone’ll tell me what we want to know if I ask it. In a house this size, there’ll be three or four phones to ask, sure, but….”

  Rhiow put her whiskers forward again, flirted her tail at Hwaith in agreement: he wandered off to head down toward the front hall. “Sometimes,” she said, “I think we get a little too reliant on our time’s tech to help us out.”

  “You might have something there…”

  After a few minutes Hwaith came trotting out the doors again with a satisfied look in his eye, and joined them under the table again. “The phone in the upstairs library remembers who used it last,” Hwaith said. “A woman. And it remembers her voice. Little and tinkly like a bell…”

  Rhiow’s eyes narrowed. “Did it remember what she said?”

  Hwaith switched his tail in negation. “Our phones don’t know words,” he said. “Just sound. This phone system isn’t sophisticated enough to handle meaning. It’s – “ He glanced at Rhiow, as if looking for words.