Diana Dueyn - The Big Meow

“It’s not just you,” Hwaith said. He licked his nose once or twice, nervous: and Aufwi looked over at Rhiow and Hwaith and said, “This is something my gate’s been doing too. It’s been sporadic, though, and I haven’t been able to get it to repeat so that I can do a diagnostic…”

“Got some trouble here,” Urruah said then, and the steady way he said it brought the fur up all over Rhiow.

“What?” she said, getting up and trotting over.

“No,” Urruah said, “nothing you need to do anything about right this second. We’re going to need a few extra paws in a little bit, though.” He bent in close, seized a bundle of the glowing gate-strings in his teeth, and reached in with the freed-up paw to hook another tangle of them with his claws. “This thing hasn’t just put down one root. It’s got five now.”

Hwaith hissed, swearing in helpless anger. “It’s not going to do any good pulling them up one at a time,” he said. “It’ll just re-root one of them while we’re working on the next.”

“We can each take one,” Rhiow said. “’Ruah, are the roots sinking themselves nearby?”

It looked as if the knotted mass of hyperstrings was resisting him, trying to snap back into the gate. He lashed his tail “no”. “They’re spread out,” he said. “South, east, southeast, southwest of here. Take a look – “

Urruah bit deeper into the hyperstring bundle he was holding in his teeth. Sudden bright strings of light shot out from the base and edges of the gateweave, seeming to lance down into the dimly glittering cityscape like laser light, the only difference being that physical objects didn’t stop them. They resumed on the other side, in one case going straight through a hillcrest and down into the landscape below.

“One’s a little stronger than the others,” he said. “That one going through the hill. Maybe it’s been there a touch longer – hard to tell. But they’re all going to have to come up at once.”

Rhiow flicked her tail. “How are you for power at the moment?” she said to Hwaith. “Did we catch you at the end of your work day, or the beginning?”

He let out a breath. “I’m tired enough,” he said, “but I won’t drop what I grab hold of a moment before anyone else does. Let’s go.”

“’Ruah, I’ll take that older root,” Rhiow said, heading over toward it. “Hwaith, the one next to mine, running down the canyon. Aufwi, the one past that. Arhu, the last one. Sif, you stand by and lend power if you sense anyone slipping.”

Everyone headed to the string Rhiow had indicated for each of them, and bit down on it or hooked their claws around it. “Can I do anything to help?” Helen said.

“Lend Sif a paw if there’s need,” Rhiow said. She bit down on her own string, pulling back a little and testing it. With the pull she got a clearer sense of the structures into which it was trying to root – the stone of some other hillside, cracked, unstable-feeling – and something else that concerned her more: an odd sour stink or flavor, unpleasant. It reminded Rhiow of something, but she couldn’t think what. And now it’s going to make me crazy for days until I remember. Where’s that coming from, though? You don’t usually get taste associations on hyperstrings — “Let us know when you’re set,” she said.

“Just a moment more,” Urruah said. All along and across the web of the gate, hyperstrings flickered and vibrated as if someone was plucking them; beads and streaks of multicolored fire chased up and down the threads as Urruah made final adjustments in the master web of the gate, securing its structure before starting to pull any roots loose. “All right,” he said then. “Everybody – pull!”

Rhiow set her teeth hard, ignoring the sudden increase in that odd stink, and started backing away from the gate. The string she was biting resisted her more aggressively, but she kept on backing away – this being only the physical component of the actual stress Rhiow was bringing to bear on the hyperstring, the pressure of the mind and of the necessary words in the Speech, all bent toward persuading it to give up, let go, stop being so attached… But the resistance increased. This attachment suits me, the string told her, in the stubborn, silent manner of a construct refusing to answer to the desires of a wizard who hadn’t put it there. I was told to root here, and here I will stay.

I have rightful authority over you, Rhiow thought in the Speech: I am sent to you on errantry by the Powers that Be, and it’s proper that you obey my intent! But the root-string was having none of it. It sought to anchor itself deeper in that down-canyon ground, even as Rhiow pulled at it. The strange muddy stink in her nostrils got stronger as it did, and Rhiow could also feel something else through the far end of the string – a shiver, a tremor, rumbling, growing: the memory of a recent earthquake. And one trying not to be just a memory –

She shivered all over, but she kept her grip. Around her she could sense the others having a similar problem: Urruah’s temper wanting to flare, but being suppressed; Arhu annoyed at anything being able to resist his intention, still unusually powerful in a wizard so near his Ordeal; Aufwi alarmed at the string’s refusal to respond: Hwaith surprisingly cool and certain as he stepped back and back with his own string. Well, it’s his own gate, after all. But he doesn’t seem to be having any better luck than the rest of us. This doesn’t look good —

From outside the group, Siff’hah said, “Rhiow – “

She was tempted to tell Siff’hah to throw all the power she had at one or another of the roots – for dividing her effort among them seemed unlikely to do much good at this point. But what if doing that unbalances the whole gateweave? It might tear loose and run out of control, like Aufwi’s did – Or else the gate might just tear apart, possibly even shred under the strain altogether. That didn’t bear thinking about, for worldgates, even a singleton gate like this one, had a tremendous amount of power wrapped up in them. Release all that energy at once, and local space and subspace were both at risk of becoming deranged – as was the matter they contained.

Either way, the tack they were taking at the moment apparently wasn’t getting them anywhere, and they were going to have to consider other possibilities. Sif, Rhiow said silently, start a mapping routine. We need to see in which exact spots those roots are sinking themselves, so we can go down there afterwards and understand the whys as well as the wheres. She was careful not to say After this doesn’t work: there was always the possibility something might yet give in their favor, that the gate would see sense and do as it was told —

Doing it now, Siff’hah said. Think we’re going to need it, too —

Rhiow said nothing. Her whole business at the moment was to hang onto her string and watch what Urruah did as he manipulated the strings held in teeth and claws. Her own words came back to her suddenly: I’m not going to do this job forever… She sank her teeth more tightly into her string, pulled harder. Now what made me say that to him right then? Maybe I was just tired. Yet one way or another, there was some truth to it. She might be a wizard until the day she kicked this life’s skin away behind her and moved on to the next one: but she wasn’t required to do the same kind of work all that while. Even specialties don’t have to be forever. And the Powers understand that sometimes you need a break from the routine —

That strange mind-stink from the hyperstring was beginning to bother her. Rhiow wanted mightily to sneeze, but that was the last thing she was going to allow herself to do at the moment, when it could upset someone else’s concentration. She wrinkled her nose, then her whole muzzle, in an attempt to disrupt the coming sneeze. It worked for a moment, but then the stink started to itch in her nostrils again. I will not, she thought, I will not, as Iau’s my witness, I will not –

“Anybody making any progress?” Urruah said, though from his tone of voice Rhiow thought he already knew the answer.

“Not moving!” Arhu said.

“The thing’s locked down,” Aufwi said. “Some kind of compulsion – “

Urruah glanced over at Hwaith. Hwaith, hanging on, simply lashed his tail angrily, tried to take one more step back, failed –

“Then ease up, all,” Urruah said. “Let’s stop and think – “

Everyone slowly started to give way to the backward pull of the gate-root he or she was holding. Rhiow could feel something peculiar down the string as she stopped exerting pressure against it: an odd sense of – not satisfaction, but relief. And not from the root, but from the gate itself: as if it knew perfectly well it was the object of contention between two different forces, and was glad to see the contention stop, because it was – frightened? Frightened, not of the other – but of us?

When Rhiow was close enough to the gate, she opened her jaws, and the root-string snapped back hard the instant she let it go. Urruah let go of the bundles of strings he was holding and dropped to his forefeet again, his ears back flat.

“Well,” Arhu said, “that was a whole lot of nothing! What’s the matter with the thing? Doesn’t it know we’re on its side, and it’s supposed to do what we ask it?”

“Good question,” Urruah said. He sat down, his tail lashing. “Something else for us to look into. Hwaith, has the gate been openly uncooperative this way with you before?”

“Never,” Hwaith said. He sounded mortified.

“Well, it doesn’t matter. I don’t think we should waste any more time trying to disengage those roots from here,” Urruah said. “Our effort’s being attenuated by our distance from the actual spaces they’re affecting.”

Rhiow flicked an ear in agreement. “We’re going to have to go to the separate locations where they’ve sunk themselves in,” she said, “and pull them up from there, one at a time. And while we do that, someone’s going to have to stay up here and keep the gate from putting down new roots in response. And if it does, try to get a sense of what’s making it behave that way.”

“I know its structures pretty well,” Aufwi said. “Probably that’s me.” He looked over at Hwaith. “If you don’t mind – “

Hwaith swung his tail “no”. “I think I’m more likely to be needed as a ‘native guide,’” he said.

Siff’hah came strolling over then, with Helen Walks Softly close behind. “I have your root locations for you,” she said to Rhiow, and put one white paw out a little ahead of her, resting it on a bare patch on the dusty reddish ground. From her paw, delicate lines of light fled away in all directions, describing in miniature a duplicate of the faintly glittering street-structure below them. They all gazed down at it, and Helen hunkered down by it and gazed down at the four small pulsing golden lights that burned on the little map. A larger white one pulsed up in the darkest part of the wizardly map, amid the hills.

“All right,” Helen said, pointing at the nearest of the golden lights south of them. “That one I know. That’s Hollywood Boulevard and – yeah, Highland Avenue, see the way it doglegs north of Franklin? There’s a lot of new building there now, but – “ and she waved a little further down the street-line to where that golden light burned – “that’s still where it belongs. Mann’s Chinese Theater.”

“You mean Grauman’s,” said Hwaith. “Who’s ‘Mann’?”

“Uh, long story,” Helen said.

“Au,” Urruah said, “Grauman’s — !” He went from wearing the ears-back expression of an annoyed gate technician to the whiskers-forward of some kind of excited arts fan, an expression Rhiow had seen a thousand times before. “You’re going to tell me that that they do opera there, I suppose,” she said.