The Big Meow

by Diane Duane

  A shiver went right down Rhiow from her ears to her tail and all her fur stood on end as the black gate paused in the air above them, and began to throb and grow. It spread fast, its blackness flickering now, impossible to look at for more than a second’s glance. And then, the portal section of the gate having widened out to nearly fifty feet across, it went utterly dark… and something came out.

  It was a single pinpoint locus of darkness, like a micro-black hole. But no innocent singularity ever carried with it such a freight of unreasoning horror as swept over Rhiow with its appearance. Inside the shielded worldgate enclosure, Rhiow saw all her team staring at the tiny thing with loathing and fear. But it did not stay tiny long. Very slowly it started blooming outward into a dark sphere, as incursions from mathematically more complex dimensions tend to do. The sphere was not solid: part of it passed through over and through the black worldgate as it grew, briefly obscuring it, then drifting to one side. Absolutely silently it grew to ten feet in diameter, thirty, fifty, a hundred feet wide. Rhiow noticed, then, how all sound had been fading away with its growth. The realization made her fur stand up even more enthusiastically than it had been.

  That was when the black sphere finally stopped growing; and through its surface, on all sides, a writhing shape began to extrude.

  At which point the air began to scream.

  Right through her shield Rhiow could instantly feel the burning on her fur, the desperate inner shriek of matter outraged by intimate contact with something impossible in normal space, the air burning a brief and horrified violet of instant annihilation where it came into direct contact with what was coming out of the black-burning sphere. Black wasn’t even the right word for it; but it would have to do, for sensory perception in this continuum had few other ways to deal with the concept of something that was the absence of physicality and on which light refused to fall, as if refusing contact with something so alien. Emptiness didn’t work as a description either; both brain and spirit, used to dealing with a universe that had no true emptiness in it though it was full of space, shied away with nature’s own abhorrence to something that by comparison made a vacuum seem packed full. Caught between the contradictions, the eye and the mind both reported emptiness that was full of something peculiarly horrible, that curled out in strangling tendrils that gripped and slid over and around the hyperstrings in space, annihilating even them where touched, and gazed eyelessly at you with a hunger that could never be filled no matter what it devoured –

  From down in the city, from nearer on the hillsides, the anguished screams of ehhif began to arise – innocent souls realizing that they without warning they were suddenly damned, and far worse than damned. Rhiow shot a glance at the gating circle. The nothingness was washing up around it, eating at it; she could see thinning in the outer walls of the protective dome over it, places where the splashed-out glow of the LA gate against the forcefield was wearing thin. Inside it, Urruah and Hwaith and Aufwi were all reared up, every one of them with his claws full of hyperstrings that were trying to warp out of shape, but being prevented. For how long? Rhiow thought, shuddering with the pain that beat on her own shield, relentlessly eating through it toward her like acid.

  The dreadful shape kept on boiling out of the sphere on all sides, filling the air over the Observatory, and the air kept on screaming in agony as the shadowy manifestation of the Outside One poured into the world, like flood waters from some dark sea, irresistible, infinite. Its dreadful pressure on the soul grew moment by moment, crushing, so that you wanted to do anything to make it stop: flee, even die. But fleeing won’t help, Rhiow thought, and neither will dying. Now’s the time!

  She was shivering with terror, and ashamed of it; yet she knew what she had to do… and so did sa’Rraah. You have no choice, the Lone One said in the back of her mind, urgent. I am the only one that our enemy will trust to come into contact with it. It thinks It knows my will. And now it will find out exactly how well it knows me. And then the silence fell in Rhiow’s mind again, waiting.

  So will I, Rhiow thought, desperate. For of all the Powers, sa’Rraah cannot enter in except where by commission or omission She is invited. And now we find out whether the word I speak next will kill not only my body, but my soul.

  One last look she threw at her team inside the great gating circle: and, inside, gazing back at her in terror, Hwaith. There has to be something else I can do–! he said to her.

  At such a moment, she thought, he’s still thinking about me! It pierced her to the heart. But there was nothing he could do, and right now, only one thing left for her.

  …Come, Rhiow said to the Lone Power.

  And She came.

  Whether what followed took a moment or forever, Rhiow couldn’t tell; she was flung down writhing, her bones burning with the entry into her body and soul of something as dark as the moment before the First Light and only a little less than an eternity old. The agelessness of the divine Rhiow had experienced before — but Queen Iau had some regard for the People she had made. What vastly burst into Rhiow now was the Queen’s ancient rival, the breeder of all envies and resentments, not overly concerned about the welfare of anything merely mortal except as its being gave Her a chance to drive a claw into Her Mother.

  Yet sa’Rraah did not dare damage Rhiow at the moment, for fear she should fail in the work now before them.Slowly Rhiow pushed herself up again as the Lone Power slid into congruence with her. With terror she felt, first the dark and cold drawing around and clothing her, and then an awful restless fire — all angers and frustrations concentrated together at the heart of the darkness, like the core of blasting pressure at the heart of some collapsed star: heat indescribable, an unbreakable inwardness, a fury at the world that almost since the beginning of things had refused to go her way.

  Power, though, that She unquestionably had as well: and unafraid Rhiow drew on that, knowing that to survive what was coming, she would need everything the Lone One had to offer her. She thought of the possibility of a shield to hold away the pain, and instantly the pain vanished, even in the face of this awful onslaught.

  Very well, Rhiow thought, looking up into that darkness that had been so painful to the sight. Now the discomfort at least was gone, set aside by something in its way far worse, that core of jealous rage inside her that burned like an ancient furnace. It had burned so since Aaurh the Mighty cast sa’Rraah out of the Pridelands and away from the Hearth, and it was the proximate cause of all the miseries the Lone One had inflicted on life from then until now. How dare She slight My primacy, sa’Rraah’s heart roared so as to be heard by all Creation: how dare She give you what She will not allow Me! You will suffer for that: suffer for it forever!

  Rhiow was conscious of the blatant one-sidedness of the anger, and she held desperately to that consciousness: the last thing she could afford right now was to be swept away into sa’Rraah’s undiluted point of view. But there was nothing in the universe like that anger, and it was something she would use.

  That you would use — ! said something from inside her, and strove to crush her down into resistlessness. I am the immortal here, I say how we shall deal with this —

  Lone One, Rhiow said, pushing back, shut up or I’ll shred your ears! We have work to do. Mortality you needed? Well, now you’ve got it. So get busy manifesting yourself! They’re buying us the time we and the world need. Don’t waste it on playing hauissh-in-the-head with me: do whatever you have to do!

  In a moment –

  Rhiow glanced at the Observatory. Over that way the Father of the Saurians stood towering up over the building, even in the face of the Outside One radiating the essence of a settled power that was binding all things together as they were, running up straight up into space and far down into the Earth and into neighboring dimensions. As Rhiow watched, Ith threw down the blinding wizardly construct he was holding in his claws, and Earth and air together kindled from it in a single blaze. That settled to reveal a glowing and intricate network of binding
s, involving everything from the subatomic to the macrospatial levels, a network of unbreakable intention that sank into the fabric of things, reinforcing it. But enough?

  There was no telling, and from the look of things, Ith wasn’t too sure either. For a breath later right around the huge base of the Observatory a massive, shining serpent-shape was curving, the gold of its burning paling down to white now, the eyes glowing dark and determined against the fire. And off to the westward, toward the sea, light began to glow in the darkness —

  In the spite of the Outside One, as if the horror was happening in some other world, the horizon began to glow, and the landscape to change. The sea dried up and vanished away at the edges of things, and the coastline stopped being the coast and became just another set of ridges in a vast plain flooded by light, as out past Pacific Coast Highway were now revealed the endless vistas of the True West. The light from the eternal sunshine of the Old Downside now flooded across the Hollywood Hills and washed up against them like a hot dry ocean, threatening the alien darkness that was flooding in from the sky.

  From where his head and uppermost body were coiled, the White Serpent’s body now stretched curving like a mighty silvery river right away into the distance of that vast landscape, as if it might stretch right around that world. Maybe it did; World Serpent was one of the shapes that Ith wore since delivering his people. But the anchoring he had built with his wizardry and now mediated in his own person was founded in more than just the idea that he might be spiritually or even physically wrapped around Earth’s old dream of itself. However the reality of Earth might quake, the Old Downside should not. Here there was only one continent, one vast plate with nothing else to grind against: and it stood fast.

  Helen Walks Softly stepped out into that light, out onto what previously had been empty air but was now hot dry summer grassland. She lifted the condor-feather wands high on either side of her and began addressing the circles of the world in long, intricate words of song, not in the Speech, but in her own Chumash language. All around her, an impossibly deep echo of the words went up as if from the earth itself. “’Alchup’osh, White Serpent, Sky Serpent, Hutash speaks to you! Once more I’ve made the world from the Seeds of the World for our children – “

  The power amassing around her, reinforcing Ith’s wizardry, was impossible not to feel. Helen didn’t stop her song or turn away from her regard of the West; but Rhiow heard her say silently, Rhi, this is as good as it’s going to get right now — !

  Rhiow licked her nose one last time and spoke to the angry presence inside her. Elder Sister… let’s take this rat by the throat!

  Yes, said sa’Rraah. Now. And if Rhiow had thought the Lone One’s presence in her before was difficult to take, now she knew better. It had taken sa’Rraah a few moments to consolidate her presence inside Rhiow properly and get Her teeth into the scruff of her soul. But now Rhiow felt as if she was simply being exploded from within. Her perspective on everything around her whited out, skewed, then resettled. Suddenly her eyes were on a level with the dark sphere and the pre-sentient un-stuff boiling out of it. She was larger than that, even; Rhiow found herself also seeing the world as if from a great height, and her mighty body crouched over the whole Los Angeles basin as if over some prey that she’d caught. There she towered up over the world, radiant with a pure and terrible darkness, the Fairest and Fallen indeed: but regardless of the Fall, she was still the Queen’s daughter, still in full possession of the glory of a God when She wanted or needed it. Now, in the face of the Outside One, sa’Rraah wore that glory for once not as a badge of insolence in her Dam’s face, but merely as identification, an ostensible mark of respect to a being more powerful than she. She bowed Her head humbly, for once playing the jackal instead of the outcast Queen of the Pride.

  Above them the darkness continued boiling in through the incursion hypersphere’s surface from Outside, and Rhiow for the first time realized that only just now — when something with the power of a god manifested before It — had the Outside One’s attention actually been drawn to them. Even now It did not speak; it was the opposite of life and thought. But nonetheless It made Itself understood. Give me the gift You promised. Give me entry into matter, that I may abolish it, and end this rebellion from within, and be All.

  “Here,” sa’Rraah said through Rhiow, and the hills around them shuddered with the power of Her words. “Here is the weak point, the way to the throat of the prey. Join with me and I will show you, and all this will be Yours.”

  Everyone and everything seemed to hold its breath as the Outside One reached out to sa’Rraah discover the way into the world of matter. It meant holding still and allowing Oneself to be felt and fondled over by that terrible slithering touch, something that invaded her body’s matter in awful analysis. Away back in the core of herself that was still wholly a Person and a wizard, Rhiow turned her whole being to the purpose of holding still and letting the violation happen, horrified beyond all reason but still strangely satisfied. It and sa’Rraah are of one mind about matter, she thought. And It’ll share her blind spot. They see matter as contemptible, and this is why Its avatar Tepeyollotl always sought to shatter the Earth – because like sa’Rraah, It takes spirit to be superior.

  We’ll see about that –

  The violation seemed to go on and on, and Rhiow could do nothing but suffer it. But after endless time, the pain subsided, draining away and leaving her limp and wretched, wishing she could die though totally unable to, with hardly even a thought able to crawl across the pitch-black floor of her mind. For what seemed like forever, nothing happened, nothing at all, as the Outside One examined what It had learned.

  And then It took the bait. It started pouring itself into sa’Rraah, and into Rhiow. As it began to manifest within them, the Outside One took the nature of matter to it, and wrapped that matter around itself, and started to become a physical thing inside the world.

  Rhiow was now beyond any further reaction except a silent scream of pain and horror that bid fair to last forever. She had been afraid that sa’Rraah might not set her free again after their ploy succeeded, or at least allow her the mercy of death. Now she realized that sa’Rraah was screaming too, screaming along with Rhiow at a violation She found as horrifying as Rhiow had found the earlier one. She began to wonder whether even the Lone One had miscalculated, had overestimated her ability to beguile this force of unnature. Will we be trapped together like this forever? Or just cast aside and destroyed, both of us, when It’s got what It wants and we’re not needed any more —

  There was no seeing anything in such a state; perception was all that was left, and even sa’Rraah’s perception was blurred by pain and terror now. But Rhiow knew that outside them, above them, the newly incarnated Outside One was taking on a shape like the Lone One’s, like Rhiow’s, but even huger and more terrible. The Black Leopard — Tepeyollotl no more Its mere avatar, but now truly containing its progenitor from Outside — loomed over Los Angeles, its great, hating, hungry eyes looking down at Earth, and beyond it, at the rest of Earth’s universe and all the worlds beyond, straight across the khiliocosm.

  Everything cowered. Right across the planet, right across the worlds, the structure of space and the fabric of time themselves crouched down low in the darkness and looked up into it fearfully, hearing the long slow snarl of the Hunter as it bent low over them, about to open the jaws of its great yawning maw to snap them up at last and swallow them down into the dark.

  But down on the terrace outside the Observatory, one patch of light remained, flowing to it from away westward in a narrow corridor where another dimension’s landscape still obtained, even under that world-ending regard. The substance and will of the World Serpent were sunk deep into that corridor of power. And though his body between Earth and the Old Downside was pulled unbearably taut, Ith’s radiant upper coils were cast around the whole fabric of the Observatory, anchoring and his jaws locked around the next coil down as his eyes blazed with an ebony fire of ce
rtainty and rage. I – shall not – be moved –!

  Rhiow and sa’Rraah could feel Ith bunching every muscle to resist the abolishing power of the great hating eyes that hung in the heavens, all the length of his body rigid with the inconceivable strain of holding a world in place. Now – would be a good time! he said silently to Rhiow.

  Not yet! sa’Rraah cried. It’s not finished becoming physical yet! Just a little more –

  Yet the shattering that Tepeyollotl most desired, the precursor of the worse destruction to follow, was already beginning. Rhiow could hear it starting at the roots of things — a tremor in the earth that would build and build until all the land shattered and was overturned, until all the seas ran into the cracks and boiled away in the mantle-deep cracks that would burst open right across the planet. That shattering wave would run straight away from here through space and time, breaking everything it met, shattering it right down to the atoms; and even the particles of dust that remained would themselves be swallowed up into the fissures that would open in space’s own structure. In time those too would close, and there would simply be nothing… nothing but the Outside One, now Inside forever, Deity by default of a dead and empty cosmos.

  Against that, though, Ith still strove. And Helen kept singing to the West as if the Old Downside was a frightened animal. “Sky Serpent, ’Alchup’osh,” she was singing, “once more give the children the gift you once gave them – “

  The shaking didn’t stop, but at least it didn’t get any worse. It’s all that can be done right now! sa’Rraah said silently to Rhiow, though She too was writhing in anguish. No active attack until It’s all here, until the connection can’t be broken –

  How much longer? Rhiow cried.

  The earth under the Observatory rocked. Ith hung on, but Rhiow could feel the strain, feel him starting to slip –

  Suddenly the earthquake broke out in full force, a roar that began to scale up and up to the point where nothing else could be heard, not even one’s own thoughts. In the sky over Los Angeles, the Leopard went jet-black and real, and Its eyes poured out a light that was itself destruction as that final roar of triumph and hatred rang out and filled the whole physical universe.