Diana Dueyn - The Big Meow

“That’s right,” Ssh’iivha said. She looked over at Hwaith. “It’s the place that has the lion as its symbol: don’t ask me the name of it – they’ve changed that about three times in the last few years. He’s just finished work on a ffhilm for them. It’s based on one of the stories he told for one of the hviih-sh’ethh, the papers-that-speak-silently.”

“A magazine,” Urruah said. “Interesting.”

“But I heard from one of the other People who come through here, Hhaiivuh his name is, he’s a mouser at one of the other ss’huhios, that the eth’Ehhif was lucky to finish work on that ffhilm when he did.” Ssh’iivha’s eyes went wide with the expression of a Person plunging happily into the latest gossip. “Apparently that big earthquake the other day did a lot of damage at the ss’huhio: some gas connection or something went wrong in the fake-street where they’d been making the ffhilm, and half the backlot burned down. There were even a couple of ehhif killed. The police and the ehhif who put out fires were all over the place for days. And even now that they’ve gone, everyone’s schedules over there are in shreds, it seems…”

“The earthquakes,” Hwaith said, “they’re part of what’s brought us here. But I hadn’t heard that anyone had been killed!”

“Oh yes,” said Ssh’iivha. “And here’s a curiosity for you! The ehhif who died in the fire weren’t even ss’huhio people, Hhaiivuh said. They were [insert Ailurin term here] ehhif – “ she used the word for “stray” that many People used to express the human-English term “homeless” – “and no one’s sure how they got into the backlot, or why they didn’t get out when the fire started. Because it didn’t start suddenly: it took a long time to get going, Hhaiivuh said. Maybe too long.” Ssh’iivha flicked on ear back in a bemused gesture. “Hhaiivuh told me that there’s a rumor going around that the fire wasn’t really caused by the earthquake at all, but started on purpose – “

From out at the front of the house came a sudden noise: a car door slamming. “Oh,” Ssh’iivha said, “he’s home early today. Anyway, Hhaiivuh told me that another of the hunters over there, Fehwau, said he’d been over in that part of the backlot earlier in the day and hadn’t smelled anybody who shouldn’t have been there. He said, Why would homeless ehhif have been there except to sleep? It didn’t make sense that they would have been there so late in the day, because the fire started at about noon, right when that earthquake happened – “

A key turned in the front door, and it opened. The ehhif who came in was extremely well-dressed: three-piece suit in dove grey, expensive-looking silvery silk tie, fedora just a shade of grey darker, shoes to match. He wasn’t a tall man, and was rather pale and slightly built; but to Rhiow’s way of thinking, that wasn’t something you’d notice much once you’d seen his eyes. They were piercing and cool behind the silvery wire-rimmed glasses: the expression could doubtless be rather intimidating, by ehhif standards, depending on what the rest of his face was doing.

He paused there as he shut the door, and glanced around at the various other People lounging about the place, and Ssh’iivha and Urruah and Rhiow and Hwaith. Seeing them all, he nodded, his expression seeming to say that all this was fine with him; and he slipped out of his jacket, draping it carefully over one of the white couches. “Half a moment,” Ssh’iivha said, “the gossip’ll keep,” and she jumped down from the couch to run over to him.

She rubbed against the ehhif’s leg, purring, and he bent down and stroked her, then picked Ssh’iivha up and cuddled her. Awwww, Urruah said silently as she reached a paw up to touch the ehhif’s cheek.

The ehhif’s mouth moved. Hey there, Miss Sheba, he said, and to Rhiow’s astonishment, not a whisper, not a murmur, came out of him as he said it. Had a good night out. Looks like you and your buddies’ve been doing the same.

He put Ssh’iivha down and went to the back door, glancing out at it, apparently to check the state of the food bowls. Then he went to the icebox, got himself a seltzer bottle, spritzed himself a glass full of it, and went over to the typewriter.

The ehhif sat down, reached down into a drawer of the desk, pulled out a sheet of paper, and rolled it into the machine with such speed and ease that it was plain this was something he’d done so many hundreds of thousands of times that he didn’t even need to think about it any more. And then he was typing, fast, with two fingers.

“You see how nice he is,” Ssh’iivha said as she wandered back to the couch and jumped up on it again. “I had no idea that there were ehhif so nice until I came to him.”

“You had another one before?” Rhiow said.

Ssh’iivha scrubbed briefly at one ear, turning it inside out and then rightside in again. “Sa’Rraah sends us these things to test us,” she said. “Oh, Hahr’rena was very beautiful. And very famous, as ehhif judge things: she’s been in a lot of ffhilmss. And she meant well: she was kind enough, when she thought to be. But she’s not very good with People. Sort of an unconscious type, always full of her own dramas and troubles, but never one to depend on for keeping food in the bowl.” Ssh’iivha opened those green eyes wide in a vexed expression. “I can’t tell you how many times I had to walk two blocks from home in BelAir to get a drink out of someone’s fountain or fishpond because she’d forgotten to fill the water dish. I was mortified. All the other ffhilm-ehhifs’ People looking out the window at me as if I was some kind of stray…! Well, finally she met the Silent One here, and ‘gave’ me to him. And was I glad to go!” Ssh’iivha’s tail lashed a little.

Behind them, the typing was going on at full speed: a piece of paper was pulled out of the typewriter, and another one was pulled out of the drawer and inserted and the typing began again, with hardly a second’s break. “He’s a good provider, then,” Rhiow said.

“Absolutely. The house here, the apartment in New York — Oh yes,” Ssh’iivha said, seeing Rhiow’s whiskers go forward, “I thought I heard the accent. Yes, we do well enough. He has a housekeeper who watches this place while we’re not here: the Buffet is on whether we’re here or not. He and I, we go back and forth between the coasts together. Not as often as we used to since before he lost his voice, but…”

Urruah had been watching the rapid-fire typing with increasing curiosity. “Rhi,” he said, “do you need me right now?”

She flicked one ear “no”. Urruah jumped off the couch and padded over to the desk, glancing up at it. “Don’t go in the drawer!” Ssh’iivha said: “he’s fanatical about that. Very organized. And don’t get too close to the left elbow: the speed it moves when he hits the thing that makes the carriage go back over, he’ll knock you halfway into next week, and then spend an hour apologizing.”

Urruah leaped up carefully onto the desk and balanced there on the edge of it, looking at what the ehhif was typing. The ehhif spared him no more than a glance, just enough to make sure that Urruah wasn’t going to disarrange anything or get in the way. You just stay there, fella, he said, and don’t get in the paper drawer – And then he went back to his typing.

“Ssh’iivha,” Rhiow said softly, “forgive him: he’s such a snoop. And a bit besotted with ehhif culture. He’s far better than the rest of my team at reading their writing, even without the Speech to help him: it’s become a hobby. Back home he’s endlessly translating their posters and ads, whether we want to know what they’re about or not – “

“And menus, I suspect,” Hwaith said, with a sly grin.

Rhiow’s whiskers went forward. “Au, cousin, you have no idea,” she said. “The foods he’s gotten me interested that it was far better I didn’t know about…” She looked back over at Ssh’iivha. “But forgive me: you were telling us about the fire that started when the earthquake hit – “

“Well, it’s all a bit strange, isn’t it?” Ssh’iivha said. “Those poor homeless ehhif – They do get into the backlot, over some wall, or through some freight gate that’s open a few minutes longer than it should be. There’s so much of the lot, they can easily move from place to place and avoid the ss’huhio’s own security people. Not us, though. There must be a hundred People working on the Lion’s backlot, and it’s impossible for us not to be able to tell what ehhif have been where, and when, and for how long. And in the case of those poor strays, you know how they smell – “

“I do,” Rhiow said. “I have a few under my care, back home.”

Behind them, the typewriter went ding! one more time, a page was ripped out, another was rolled in. “He’s so fast,” Rhiow said.

“You have no idea,” said Ssh’iivha. “You should see him when he really gets going. He’ll be doing that hour on hour, never gets up, never looks away from the machine. I worry about him sometimes, but there’s no stopping him: besides listening to other ehhif talk, it seems to be his life.” She let out a slightly sad breath.

“And there’s not another ehhif for him?” Rhiow said.

Ssh’iivha looked pensive. “No,” she said, “not for a while now. Not the one he wants, anyway – “

“Rhi?”

She looked up. At the desk, the silent ehhif was still typing away, but Urruah was gazing down at the the page he’d just taken out of the typewriter. He glanced up at Rhiow. “You need to see this,” he said: and he sounded alarmed.

Rhiow gave Ssh’iivha a bemused look. “I’m assuming this isn’t just some attack of fannishness,” she said. “Excuse me a second– “

She leapt up quietly onto an empty spot in the bookshelf to the right of the desk, so as not to upset the ehhif, and looked over his shoulder. He was still rattling away at top speed. “Amazing how fast one of them can work with only two toes,” she said. Her own Iaehh worked the same way, but at no speed anything like this. “So what am I supposed to be seeing?”

“That last page,” Urruah said. “No, wait a second – “

He looked at the three pieces of paper to the right of the typewriter. Rhiow felt, under her skin, the small wizardry Urruah was doing. The barest breeze moved through the room, easily mistakable for a random draft; and at the same time the topmost piece of paper slid smoothly to the side so that Rhiow could see the one under it.

“Very slick,” she said, squinting at the paper. “What am I looking for, exactly?” And her tail lashed a little. “This is just so strange…” For she was much more used to Iaehh’s laptop now, and the ehhif letters that burned up clear and sharp onto the shining page, than this strange mechanical way of putting one’s thoughts into fixed form with little hammers and an inked ribbon. Yet at the same time there was that strange, retro feeling of mass and solidity about all this, the same feel one got from the cars in front of the houses and the huge stoves in the kitchen: something triumphant, a victory of intention over resistant matter. Not a wizardly mindset at all, indeed something very ehhif-ish – but you had to admire it all the same.

“Look through my eyes,” Urruah said. “It’s faster.”

She purred at his courtesy, crouched herself down compactly on the bookshelf, let her eyes go unfocused, and did the small twist and knot of wizardry that for a moment would let her share Urruah’s eyes. It always took a moment for her to synch in, for toms do not see the world the same way queens do: nearly everything has an additional edge, being judged as either enemy or potential conquest. But Urruah was both tom and wizard, and therefore knew that some things, like ehhif print, were essentially neutral in content if not context. Rhiow squinted her eyes a little, as any Person does to see more clearly, and read on the first paper: