Diana Dueyn - The Big Meow

She flirted her tail carelessly and jumped up onto the beam, dismissing the wizardry. Jath was crouched down into a compact bundle of silvery gray, looking relaxed, and as self-satisfied as Urruah had warned her. She bent down to bump noses with him. “Are you rested, cousin? That was some work you did…”

“Rested enough,” he said. “Thanks, Rhiow. But business takes precedence, as usual…” He glanced behind him.

Aufwi was sitting there in front of Urruah, his tail curled up neatly around his toes, and maintaining a posture probably more formal than he strictly needed to use with a wizard who was simply acting in a supervisory capacity in his specialty, and not as an actual Advisory or Senior. It was a courtesy in someone his age, only one life on and a few years into that, but there was really no need for it. To defuse it she went straight over and breathed breaths with him. “Aufwi,” she said, “long time no smell, cousin!” Her lips wrinkled back at the agreeable scent of fresh tuna. “Can that be sushi?”

“I had time for a snack before I came,” Aufwi said.

“Some snack,” Rhiow said. “The Eye can’t have been up more than an hour or two in LA, cousin! I wish more of my breakfasts were like that – “

“I moved into a hHaha’hnese restaurant,” Aufwi said. “They had a vermin problem…I solved it.” He looked smug. “And apparently my coloring’s lucky for them.”

That interested Rhiow. Aufwi was shorthaired and mostly white-furred, but also sported the occasional patch of red-brown or gray. “You need to tell me more about that when you have time,” Rhiow said. “But first tell me what brings you out all this way.”

“Well,” Aufwi said, “at first sniff, anyway, I’d say that the L.A. gate is finally trying to spawn.”

Rhiow blinked at that. “Iau’s name, I thought Great Rhoua would wink before that happened! Though I can’t say I mind being wrong. When did this start?”

“A few weeks ago,” Aufwi said. “At first I thought it was another ‘false labor:’ you know how many of those we’ve had over the years. All these little shudders and discontinuities in the main gate’s function, they build up, they build up some more, and then…nothing!” His tail thumped in mild frustration, and some embarrassment: he’d reported quite a number of these “fleabites” to Rhiow over the past year and a half.

“But this has been different, I take it,” Rhiow said.

“A lot,” said Aufwi. “There hasn’t been anything small about these discontinuities. The gate’s connection to its power sources in the Downside starts wavering, as if something’s pulling power off it – “

“Which is impossible,” Urruah said, “under normal circumstances.” He gave Rhiow a look over Aufwi’s shoulder. Together they had lately been through some very non-normal circumstances involving their own gates, and power-loss or diversion had routinely been a symptom.

“But it always comes right back again,” Aufwi said, tilting one ear back at Urruah. “Then, right after that, you get a spacetime tremor somewhere in the neighborhood, never outside a thousand-meter radius. And never very big, a little shallow gravitational dimple — exactly the kind of thing you get when a new gate’s about to manifest. It even displays the right kind of offset.” That was a peculiarity of new gates when they opened: they often pushed themselves a little off to one side of the largest local population concentration, rather than appearing right in the middle of it. “And then – “ His tail started to thrash.

“Nothing?” Rhiow said.

“Repeatedly,” said Aufwi. His green eyes narrowed with his annoyance: it was as if he thought this was all his fault somehow. “I can’t get rid of the idea that I’ve been doing something wrong at the management end.”

Over Aufwi’s shoulder, Urruah gave Rhiow a look that was half irony, half sympathy: once upon a time, he’d been full of such complaints himself, before Saash whacked him into some kind of confidence in his own abilities. “So far,” Urruah said, “it all sounds like it came right from the Whisperer to your ear. You can’t hurry a gate; especially not this one. We all know it’s had a peculiar developmental history. I can’t see any way you’ve misstepped.”

“You’re kind to say that,” Aufwi said. “But this last time – the day before yesterday – the pattern changed a little, and I started to get concerned. It took the main gate something like an hour to get back to normal – in terms of the power conduit to the Downside re-establishing itself – and that could have been big trouble, if I hadn’t been able to shut it down before anyone started a transit through it. Also, the gate jumped out of its normal position.”

“But it’s always doing that,” Urruah said.

Rhiow waved her tail in agreement: the LA gate was famously peripatetic for any worldgate associated with such a large population center. “It’s just that Los Angeles has never had enough people concentrated tightly enough together to convince the gate to put down a permanent spatial root,” she said. “The city’s so spread out…”

“Believe me, I know,” Aufwi said. “It’s the story of my life. Is the gate in Union Station today, or has it rolled over to Olvera Street again, or jumped over to Wilshire? I get a lot of exercise.” This time Aufwi at least looked amused as well as annoyed. “But this time it jumped a lot further than usual, right into Chavez Ravine. And it was active when it jumped.”

Jath abruptly glanced up, looking interested. “Were they playing?” he said.

Urruah blinked. “Playing what?”

“Vh’aisss’vhall,” Jath said.

Rhiow knew about the game, but only vaguely: it was something Iaehh often watched on the imagebox in the apartment. For the moment, though, her eyes widened as she thought of a live worldgate falling into a stadium full of unsuspecting ehhif. “You caught it and brought it back, of course….”

“Sure. The gate’d gone quiescent again by then. But they could never find out what happened to the ball that the ehhif at bat hit into it–”

“How did they score that?” Jath said, actually sitting up as if the proceedings were now of some interest to him.

“A strike,” Aufwi said. “Foul tip.”

“Oh, now that doesn’t make any sense,” Jath said. “Was the gate in the ss’hahium when he hit the ball into it? Then it’s an ihhn-hhark hhome-rrhun – “

Rhiow closed her eyes briefly. I will meet the seriously obsessed today, she thought, belatedly starting the meditation she really should have done as soon as she got up. I will meet toms intent on strange interspecies crosscultural activities, an intention mostly meant to distract them from the fact that they’re not having sex right this minute. They will sink the teeth of distraction into my scruff and seek to drag me places I have absolutely no desire to go, being fond of my sanity. Nonetheless I will keep my mind on my business and avoid slicing their ears to ribbons…at least until they’ve forgotten about my scruff and my potential butt, and started discussing oh’ra singers and pastrami and vh’aisss’vhal scoring again.

Down on the main floor, there came a small bang! of displaced air off to one side. Rhiow’s head snapped around, and so did many others of the ehhif down there; but after a moment all the ehhif who’d noticed went back to what they were doing, since what they’d heard had simply sounded like something being dropped on that hard concrete floor. When the second bang! happened, no one but the People in the room even bothered to look. A moment later Arhu came wandering around the back of one of the huge scenery-crates, and Siff’hah from behind another. Rhiow let out an amused breath. But this was inevitable. I thought about pastrami…

“Sorry,” Rhiow said, turning back to Aufwi. “Aufwi, forgive me; so strange a day we’ve had, my brains are still rattling inside my head as if the Queen had boxed my ears. You got the gate back into place – “

“Yes,” Aufwi said. “Fortunately it’s not hard to move, being so mobile by nature. But, Rhiow, these energy surges and displacements are starting to come closer together. If this gate’s going into real labor rather than these little contractions, we ought to shut it down for through transits until it gets on with its business. But I don’t have the authority for that.”

“I have,” Rhiow said. “But I should go have a look first: so you did right to bring the problem to me.” She glanced over at Urruah. “If we do need to shut it down,” she said, “San Francisco’s complex could take the extra load for the time being, I’d think.”

“They’re not that busy up there,” Urruah. “It should be no problem: and if it started to become one, Vancouver or Yucatan could assist.”

Rhiow waved her tail in assent. “Let’s go, then,” she said. “’Ruah?”

“Sure,” he said, and got up, slipping past her and starting to walk down the air. “I’ve got a place over there in the back where I keep a little transit circle set up – “

“Not where any of these poor creatures can stumble onto it, I trust?” Rhiow called after him, trying not to sound too desperately concerned.

“Not more than one at a time,” Urruah said. “Follow me, please…”

He went on down the air, with Jath after him. “Aufwi,” Jath said over his shoulder, “when you’re done there, come on back, I want to talk to you about this scoring thing…”

“I’m so sorry to have bothered you when you should have been resting,” Aufwi said from behind Rhiow, sounding unnecessarily apologetic. “The Whisperer gave me a precis of what you were up to: I can’t believe you’re up and walking around after a piece of work like that…”

“Cousin, please, no more of it,” Rhiow said, putting her whiskers forward. “You did exactly what you should have. And we don’t see enough of you over here! Jath’s right too – you should come and spend some non-business time with us…get to know our own gates a little, and work with the local teams. You haven’t met Arhu and Siff’hah yet: come greet them. Urruah, where are we going, exactly?”

She got no immediate answer, for once down on the floor there followed a few moments of mixing and mingling, breaths being breathed and noses being bumped. Rhiow stepped away after a few seconds and let her team get on with it, thinking that she really must make sure that Aufwi came out to do a brief internship with one or another of the New York teams, preferably her own. His previous senior, Fefssuh, had been easygoing and knowledgeable, but so very senior and set in his ways – Aufwi had come to work with him when Fefssuh was almost twelve – that Aufwi had had too little time or opportunity to develop much in the way of initiative or self-confidence. And those were qualities vital in a gate technician. A week or two with Arhu will sort that out, Rhiow thought. Maybe when summer’s done and we’ve settled his gate down –

“You slept in today,” Arhu said, falling in beside Rhiow as she went after Urruah, toward the back of the fly area.

“You could have done the same,” Rhiow said. “For a change.”

“I hate to miss anything,” Arhu said, glancing around.

“Nothing much to miss,” said Siff’hah, slipping around to bracket Rhiow on the other side. It was a game of theirs, Rhiow had been noticing: each of them would get up close to one of your ears, and then they would start passing their opinions back and forth through your head. “Look at this crowd,” Siff’hah said, glancing scornfully around at the various People watching them from hiding. “They all think we’re fflah.”