The Big Meow

by Diane Duane

  Now, something whispered in Rhiow’s ear: to her surprise, not sa’Rraah. And something Person-shaped and burning white went past her like lightning, and caught Tepeyollotl by the throat, knocking it onto the floor of Creation.

  Rhiow, joined all against her will with a God, realized that she had now been caught up into that far more central level of being where the Gods have their dwelling, and their wars. With a yowling that broke even through the echo of the destruction trying to unleash itself on the planes below, Queen Iau in her full majesty, in lioness-shape and blinding as a star, roared and tore at the Outside One in its form of Black Leopard. To that fight too came Aaurh the Mighty with the untempered fires of creation wreathed about Her, and beside Her the Whisperer slender and deadly as an unsheathed claw, and with them even the Great Tom, black and scarred and one-eyed, the other Eye fully open and blazing now, and every claw alive with lightning from the birth of things. All of them attacked the Leopard together. Its scream, and their battle roars, went up until they seemed to fill the whole world. And sa’Rraah, dark-pelted like Rhiow now, flung herself into that fight as well, intent on tearing out the throat of the enemy before which She had been forced to humiliate herself.

  Never before had all the Pride of Heaven gone into the fight together against a foe from outside. Now as one They attacked the monstrous horror from Outside, and tore it with teeth and claws.

  But it was far bigger than They were. And Rhiow, carried along with sa’Rraah into the center of that battle, went cold with fear.

  One more thing is needed, said the soft voice inside her brain. Let’s hope it’s enough —

  Out beyond the Observatory terrace, Helen Walks Softly lifted the condor-feather wands over her head in the face of the awful black countenance staring down from the sky. A shadow fell even over the narrow corridor of light leading back to the Old Downside: the shadow of vast wings. Under their shadow, the wind started to rise, running down the canyons like the Santa Ana. Now let the Nine-Wind God come to the place of the Serpent Rope —

  For just a flash those wings, half-seen in the sky, covered everything with a cleaner shadow than what streamed away from the Outside One. And in answer, lightning struck out of that shadow, lashing down like whips all over the high ridges and mountains surrounding the basin. Smoke began rising, and the dim red eyes of flame opened in the brush on the hillside, growing stronger and brighter with every breath.

  And with those few breaths the lightning became more focused, more accurate, and did not strike the hillsides any more. A huge thick bolt like a whip braided of fire struck the Black Leopard right between the eyes. It yowled in pain and rage, and with the pain, surprise. Pain had apparently not occurred to It. More lightning leapt out of the air and began to strike it again and again. There’s a little distraction for you, cousins, Helen said. Make the most of it, because I don’t know how long it’s going to last!

  Over in the spell-circle, Urruah and Aufwi and Hwaith exchanged glances. Ready?

  Ready –

  Ready!

  Sif?

  Get on with it!

  The three toms reached out of the confinement enclosures where they stood inside the spell-circle, and each gathered to him like an armful of guy-wires a bundle of hyperstrings that had been tethered to the floor of the spell. The secondary strings that defined the synchronization between the LA gate and the incursion gate, still burning black above them, sprang into visibility. Hastily the three of them started to pull on the three sets of strings.

  There was nothing easy about it. Slowly, like a tethered zeppelin, the black gate started drifting toward them: but it resisted them, and at one point simply refused to drift any closer to the LA gate and the spell circle. The Black Leopard had noticed it. But it was twisting and yowling under an increasing onslaught of lightnings, and caught up in a battle on another plane.

  There was no telling how much longer this state would last, however. From her little spell-dome, Siffha’h looked over at Arhu.

  Do it now! he said.

  No, Aufwi yowled, we’re not ready!If it’s not inside the circle, we can’t be sure of the synch —

  Urruah glanced around at the Leopard, then back up at the black gate. I wouldn’t wait, he said. Sif, go!

  The dome under which she had been sitting and watching her claudication-pearl winked out. Siffha’h seized the pearl in her mouth, not wanting to trust its management to levitation under the circumstances, and bounded across the circle to where Urruah and Aufwi and Hwaith were desperately trying to reel the hyperstrings in. Right up Urruah’s bunch of strings Siffha’h ran, and paused there, balancing precariously, as the black gate was slowly dragged closer to the spell-circle’s edge.

  Around them, the lightning licked and flashed at the hillcrests as the Black Leopard’s seeming fixed on them and tried to move closer. Hurry up! Siffha’h yelled.

  None of the toms answered her. Like the others, Urruah was clawing the hyperstrings closer to him in armfuls, as if climbing a tree. They vanished into the spell structure behind him, and slowly, slowly the black gate drifted closer –

  Siffha’h balanced, wavered as the strings were pulled under her, and almost fell – then caught herself and took four or five hurried steps up the string bundle again, sinking in her claws, hanging on. The black gate was almost up against the spell-circle’s border now. Behind them, the Leopard roared and everything shook again –

  Sif!

  She didn’t bother answering Arhu’s desperate shout. Siffha’h ran up the string bundle nearly to where it anchored into the structure of the black gate, near the bottom of the portal, and there again she clung and waited –

  The gate’s interface butted into the spell-circle’s boundary… and then, an eternal few seconds later, through it.

  Siffha’h spat the little glowing pearl into the gate locus. The pearl vanished into its darkness.

  Get down! she yowled, and turned to leap down into the circle.

  As she hit the ground, Urruah had just time enough to turn around and leap onto the control section of the spell that broke the connections to the black gate. Aufwi let go the strings he was holding, reared up and came down on the separate section that activated the circle’s protective shield. Then, looking around, Aufwi’s jaw dropped. Urruah!

  Urruah turned to look.

  Hwaith was gone —

  Everything whited out as the black gate blew.

  Deeper in reality, the battle went on, Queen Iau and her Mate and children tore at the Black Leopard’s essence, seemingly without effect. That darkness now reared above them, growing greater until one of its paws was the size of the Queen or the Great Tom. Aaurh the Mighty charged It, roaring, but the roar was lost in the earthquake-thunder, and it swept Her aside like a kitten. Sa’Rraah leapt at Its throat and clung there, biting deep, but It shook Her off like a rat. In front of It, Queen Iau crouched down and readied Herself for one more spring, though it seemed hopeless –

  And suddenly the whole ground of being in that place flickered, as if a wave of some kind had run through the air. It passed over all the Pride without effect. But when it had passed, the Black Leopard looked somehow less definite, somehow diminished. And a moment later it stared at itself in astonishment and rage, for it was once more no bigger than the Queen.

  “So,” Queen Iau said, and leapt. And this time, caught by the throat, the Black Leopard screamed and went down.

  The Pride followed to finish off the Queen’s enemy. Squealing in pain, flailing in horror, the Outside One began to come apart beneath their teeth and claws. It shredded away like cloud before wind, in tatters and patches, as the connection to its power was lost. Tepeyollotl the Eater was vanishing now as It had in Its time made others vanish: for it was now just a physical thing. Methodically, tempering Their rage now – for there was no need for it – the divine Pride abolished the Outside One as It would have abolished Them and everything else.

  And the floors of Heaven shone clean and empty exc
ept for the Pride, who stood panting and scarred on the floor of Heaven, looking at one another.

  “My Daughter,” Queen Iau said, “well done. “

  “Yes,” sa’Rraah said, “it is.” And without another word she flung herself at her Mother’s throat.

  They rolled over and over the floors of existence together, the Lone One kicking at her Dam’s guts and tearing at Her with Her claws, during this one moment when the One might be slightly less than omnipotent. Rhiow, now separate again from the Lone One with the destruction of the black gate and the dissolution of the conditions that had prompted their joining, stood aside on the floor of Heaven and yowled in distress at what she had inadvertently brought about. No, this wasn’t supposed to happen, no!

  But the Queen rose up and threw sa’Rraah aside – and as she did so, without warning a dark shape came shouldering past Rhiow and leapt onto sa’Rraah in turn. For several of those eternal moments Rhiow could only watch in astonishment as the Great Tom caught sa’Rraah Herself by the scruff and slammed her down against the dark floor of their conjunct mind, digging his claws in behind her shoulders and pinning her so that She didn’t even dare writhe or struggle to get away.

  Out! He yowled.

  A moment later, She had fled.

  Only then did He look back at Rhiow. Only then did she see the one dark eye… and the one bronze one. She stared.

  Queen Iau shook Herself all over, glancing in an idle way at the bright fur on her back, still roused a little with the annoyance of the fight, and then strolled over to Rhiow and Hwaith. Behind her, the Whisperer and Aaurh the Mighty came along like good pride-daughters, already healed of the scars They had acquired in the fight, and looking a little curiously at the Great Tom.

  Hwaith in the Tom’s person flicked an ear at the Queen. Madam, he said.

  She eyed him with amusement, then looked at Rhiow. It seems that your friend learned something from the bargain you and my Eldest Daughter struck, Queen Iau said.

  Rhiow was still thunderstruck.

  The Tom and I spoke, Madam, Hwaith said. I couldn’t stay: I had to come here to make sure that all went well. And he looked at Rhiow. My Royal Sire was willing to allow me to join him and assist him… after some encouragement.

  Rhiow’s eyes went wide.

  Iau’s whiskers went forward. Mostly, my son, she said, it’s wiser to keep such assistance to a minimum. We are in very special circumstances here: but your body will not be able to bear much more. You should go.

  She waved Her tail at them. Go on, she said. On this plane and on others, there’s a lot of cleaning up to do. But we’ll talk again.

  Rhiow and Hwaith bowed to the Queen, and vanished –

  …back into reality.

  Rhiow sat up straight as a Person will who’s dozed off sitting up, and stared around her in near-panic at the thought of what she might find. The air was full of dust and smoke and the smell of burning, but empty of that loathsome dark curdling that had sucked the life and color out of everything up here. Normal evening was reasserting itself, though after a quake of this size there was understandably little else that was normal about the night. Cracks spread all across the Observatory terrace’s paving, and all around Rhiow could hear little rustles of falling dirt from tiny landslides in the canyons down the mountain’s side, as the abused earth tried to settle itself down. That wasn’t going to happen for a while yet: right then an aftershock shook the ground under her paws.

  But Rhiow, who just a few days before had clung to a tree limb like a scared squirrel on feeling such a thing, now hardly noticed it at all as she stared around. There was Ith, sitting down on his haunches by the north-facing Observatory wall. There were Urruah and Aufwi sitting shocked-looking in the middle of the now deactivated spell-circle, talking excitedly to each other, and Siffha’h, looking very smug as she sat and had a wash: and Helen Walks Softly, sitting on one of the white granite park benches near the edge of the terrace, taking the condor feathers out of her hair.

  And sitting by himself only a few feet away, in the shadow of the white granite obelisk and just under the majestic robed form of some ehhif physicist, was Hwaith…looking at her.

  “Oh, what did you do,” Rhiow said to Hwaith. “What did you do!”

  “What I had to,” Hwaith, said, “for my queen.”

  Rhiow went straight to him and butted his head, hard. Abashed, he started washing Rhiow’s ear.

  She let him.

  The Big Meow: Chapter Thirteen

  The cleanup was going to take days: that much was obvious from the start. Not even half the world’s wizards could develop a custom timepatch for such a cosmically destabilizing event, and implement it, in a hurry. But that was not Rhiow’s problem, and for that night at least she was glad to let it be someone else’s.

  They made their way back to the Silent Man’s house via transit circle, since every bit of strictly physical movement through this space would add to the already significant difficulties that would accompany the patching. While Aufwi was building the circle, though, Rhiow paused with Urruah to look westward. The Old Downside, having done its job and kept the solid earth solid, was gone now, and the Pacific was once more lying in its bed. But over on Cahuenga Peak, the results of other events of the evening were plain to see. That white sign that Urruah had made so much of earlier when they’d landed under it had not escaped the attention of the angry skies. HOLLYWOODLAND it had said earlier. But now by cityglow they could see how the last four letters lay shattered and smoking on the ground, and the brush they’d fallen onto smouldered yet. “Oh dear,” Rhiow said. “That’s probably going to take a while to fix.”

  Urruah, though, was looking across at the broken word, and his whiskers were pushed right forward. “You know,” he said, “even if they do fix it, somehow I suspect it’s not going to matter…”

  They walked away. “What an incredible mess,” Rhiow said. “The patching’s going to be a nightmare.”

  Urruah shrugged his tail. “It could have been worse,” he said. “Try patching a whole planet, or a whole region of space. But the Planetary’s on it, and he won’t dawdle: not with as many casualties as there were. Bad enough that they happened, and people suffered them. But after the master patch team’s done, things here will be back to normal instantly… as far as any ehhif here can tell. They’ll just reset the whole LA basin to sunset local time.”

  “’Just!””

  Urruah chuckled. “I’m not minimizing the work involved,” he said. “But it beats the alternative…”

  “No argument,” Rhiow said.

  Aufwi finished the circle, and everyone crowded into it, even Ith, who curled his tail carefully into it with a sigh, and Arhu promptly walked up it and sat on his head again. A second later they were in the Silent Man’s back yard, and he came out the French doors and looked at them, shaking his head.

  I did not think I was going to see you people again, he said. When the hillside started falling down, I pretty much thought that was it. Yet it didn’t fall down, quite. Or on any of the other houses around here.

  “Oh well,” Arhu said, clambering down off Ith again and heading for the house with his tail up, “we didn’t want to mess things up too much.” He paused by the Silent Man and gave him a sassy look. “But you should have some better cracks in your front walk now.”

  To Rhiow’s astonishment, and also to Arhu’s, the Silent Man picked Arhu up and dangled him in front of him like a doll, grinning from ear to ear. And I thought I was a cat person before, he said. I want to hear about everything that happened. But first you should all come in and have something to eat.

  There was no arguing with that. They did.

  The storytelling went on late into the night, despite how wrecked the wizardly exertions should normally have left them all. “I have a feeling,” Helen said, stretched out luxuriously again on the white couch with Sheba on her lap, “that the Queen has been busy awarding dispensations of energy to the deserving…”

>   The Silent Man had been taking notes nonstop for at least three hours when they ran out of details for him, or at least details that would make sense. He looked at the pile of flip-notebook pages full of shorthand and shook his head, and stretched, being careful to avoid Ith’s head where it lay sticking into the living room through the open French doors. I have no idea what to make of most of this.

  “I’m not sure we do either,” Urruah said. “It’s going to take a year’s worth of digesting.”

  But will I be able to do that? the Silent Man said. If your ‘patching wizards’ are going to put everything back the way it was before the big quake started… will I remember?

  “Everything that happened up to then, surely,” Arhu said. “But you might want to leave town before the reset… and take your notes with you. Otherwise you won’t know how it came out.”

  “I’ll let you know when it’s about to happen,” Hwaith said.

  The Silent Man looked surprised. What – you’re not going back to the future with Blackie?

  Rhiow looked away. “No,” Hwaith said. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way.” He was sitting up with his tail curled around his toes: now he became very interested in the end of the tail. “Sometimes we just have to do our job, that’s all.”

  The Silent Man said nothing for a while. Then he looked at Rhiow. I need to let you know, he said, that the tinkering you did with my innards has just about worn off. That tells me that it’s about time I left town and headed back east. He glanced around. Sheba and I were just about finished with this town, anyway….

  “There’s no harm in letting you know,” Urruah said, “that they won’t be finished with you for a long, long time. And you’ll make a lot of ehhif happy over time.”

  The Silent Man bowed to him from where he sat in the wooden chair by the desk. There is no higher praise, he said.