To Visit the Queen (41 page)

Rhiow fell silent and thought about that for a moment. Until now she had been holding this particular
ehhif
belief as somewhat barbaric, almost funny, the result of a misunderstanding, for indeed People had told the
ehhif
of those long-past days how their own lives went: nine lives, nine deaths, and if you had done more good than evil, there followed a tenth life in a body immune to the more crass aspects of physicality, like injury, decay, and age— the fully realized Life of which the previous nine had been rough sketches. The
ehhif
, as so often happened, had gotten some of the details of this story muddled, and thought "their" cats were telling them about immortality after life in a physical body. With this understanding, the
ehhif
of Egypt, an endlessly practical people, had started working on ways to preserve the bodies of the dead— human as well as feline— with an eye to making sure those bodies would last until they were needed again. Over nearly a millennium of practice, mummification had become a science (as these
ehhif
regarded such things), elaborate, involved— and, here and there, with a touch of wizardry about it.

Now, though, this set of circumstances seemed less silly to Rhiow, and much more intriguing. The One, and Her daughters the Powers That Be, rarely did anything without a purpose. Could it be that all the magnificent sarcophagi and paintings, all the riches piled and buried in all the tombs, the folly and the glory of it, were all a blind, a distraction, meant for the one Power that was less than kindly disposed toward life? A feint, a misdirection, a behavior that externally seemed humorously typical of the stupidities of
ehhif
, but one concealing something far more important? The mummified bodies of hundreds of thousands of People, lying in the sand, forgotten: a resource, a well of potential...

... a weapon.

Rhiow did not have the kind of confusion about bodies that
ehhif
all too often had. Once you were out of it for good, a body was meat: whatever happened to it,
you
didn't care, and those around you were expected to do no more (if it was convenient) than try to drag it off somewhere a little private, where the elements of the world would dispose of it in their own fashion. Rhiow knew that the People who had once inhabited those now-mummified bodies would be far beyond caring what happened to their mortal remains. Either they would have run their nine lives' term and ended so, subsumed back into the endless purr that lay behind the merely physical Universe, as was the way of most of the People; or they would be ten lives along now, in bodies so much better suited to their needs that they would laugh at the mere thought of the old ones. If their two-thousand-year-old remains had to be used somehow as a weapon against the Lone One, not one of them would object.

But those bodies were ground up, now, and spread over half the counties of this island. Certainly they were too far scattered for the kind of intervention this spell construct would require.

Rhiow looked at the construct.
Well
, she said to the Whisperer,
will it work?

A long, long pause.

Maybe...

She got up and stretched. "The only thing we haven't decided," she said to Huff, "is when we're going to do this."

"It's been rather a long day," Huff said, and glanced over at Auhlae, who was giving him a thoughtful look. "To this particular piece of work, I'd like to come well rested. Tomorrow night?"

The others all nodded.

"Shall I come with you?" Ith asked.

Rhiow looked at him with some unease. "The concern about the Father of his People risking himself comes up again," she said. "You'd better take it up with Them. But I for one would value your company."

She glanced at Huff. He twitched his tail yes. "See where your responsibilities lie, cousin," he said to Ith, "and then join us if you can. But this work alone, I think, is likely to be of great use." He glanced at the icosaract.

Ith got up. "I will go to my own, then," he said, "and consult with the Powers." He bowed to the group and laid his tail over Arhu's for a moment: then he stepped into the air again, and was gone.

"What about Siffha'h?" Arhu said.

"What about her?" said Fhrio. The growl was missing... just.

"Nothing," Arhu said, and sighed, and got up. "Absolutely nothing at all."

"Come on, 'Ruah," Rhiow said. "Let's get home and take a look around. Huff, Auhlae..." She touched cheeks with them: after doing so with Huff, she paused a second, seeing something in his eyes that she couldn't quite classify.

"It'll be all right," Rhiow said.

"Of course it will," Huff said, and his whiskers went forward ever so slightly. "Till tomorrow night, cousin.
Dai stihó.
"

They made their way home together, Rhiow and Urruah and Arhu, and stepped out with some relief from the long station platforms, out into the echo and bustle of the main concourse. Sidled, they walked through it without too much concern for the
ehhif
. It was getting late on a Saturday evening, and growing quiet. Above them, the "stars" burned backward in the zodiac of a feigned Mediterranean sky, but the breezes that blew by under the great arched ceiling bore mostly the scents of the last fresh-ground coffee of the day, and a lingering aroma of pizza and cold cuts.

Urruah breathed deeply. "You know," he said, "their gating complex is very historic and all, all those old buildings and castles and whatnot... but I like ours better."

"You just prefer the food," Rhiow said.

"Yeah, well, I intend to have a seriously big dinner tonight," Urruah said, "and then a whole night's sleep in my Dumpster. Who knows if I'll ever see it again?"

Rhiow glanced over at him. "You're really worried, aren't you," she said.

"I think I have reason. Don't you?"

There was little evidence to suggest otherwise. There was no question that the situation was dangerous. But having granted that, Rhiow saw no advantage in dwelling on it. "If worrying would help," she said, "I'd be right in there with you. But I've no evidence that it makes any difference."

"Optimist," Urruah said.

"Pessimist," Rhiow said.

"And which side do
you
come down on?" Urruah said to Arhu, who was walking between them, silent.

"Neither," Arhu said. "I'd sooner wait to See which way to jump." He looked a little dubious. "But you know, Rhiow, 'Ruah, it's all just probabilities. I See things, but there's always that little warning hovering at the edge of them. 'It may not turn out this way.' " He sighed. "Very annoying..."

"I don't know," Rhiow said. "I'd think it might be worse if what you saw
always
happened and there was no escape. That would be depressing. As well as boring: nothing would ever surprise you."

"Give me no surprises," Urruah said definitely. "Give me certainty over uncertainty anytime. I'll take the boredom and be grateful."

Rhiow laughed at him, but the laughter was slightly hollow. "So let's postulate best case for a moment," she said. "Say the queen
is
assassinated. Is there any slightest chance, do you think, that the war might
not
happen, despite what Arhu Saw? As he says, it's still only probability."

Urruah flirted his tail sideways in a gesture of complete uncertainty as they walked past the shining brass central information booth. "Even in our own world," he said, "the only reason
ehhif
managed to keep the Winter from falling for so long was that there were
two
great powers that had atomic weapons... and everyone was sure that, no matter which one of them started the fight,
everyone's
throat would be ripped out before it was finished. And even then there were close calls. That one
ehhif
president who got lucky, for example, because spies and wizards were in the right places at the right time, to help him covertly or tell him what he needed to know to maneuver properly in that nasty little game of
hauissh
that he and his enemy were playing. Luck, yes, and the Powers' intervention— and not much else—
that
saved them. But in that alternate eighteen seventy-four, there's just
one
power that has the bomb. There is no great counterbalance against the British power in this world to keep them from using it. The only thing that could save them is if their great politicians suddenly became cautious, and what do you think the odds are on
that?"

"With the
ehhif
Disraeli as the queen's main minister at that point?" Rhiow shook her head. "From what Hhuhm'hri told me, the chances are slim and none. If the queen dies, he'll use the excuse to sweep all the lesser 'troublemaking' nations away before him. He's been looking for an excuse to do that, I'd say, for a long time: certainly in our own world he was not exactly a cautious
ehhif
, or one to back down when provoked. At this time period, in our own world, he was busy trying to get the queen to take another title, as a kind of over-queen of another prides'-pride of
ehhif
. 'Empress,' they called it. She finally let him talk her into it, or flatter her into it, rather. Granted, that turned out to be a less destructive act of aggression, but the act was dam to a litter of results, later on, that cost many
ehhif
their lives. It's still doing so, in fact." Rhiow twitched her tail, troubled.

"In other words," Urruah said, "if given the excuse, he'll bomb the rebellious prides right back into the Stone Age."

"And his own pride as well," Arhu said. "Just what the Lone One wants."

"The warning is written on the Moon," Rhiow said, "as we saw. That's what It intends the Earth to look like after It's done."

"And the situation might get still worse," Urruah said. "It seems that these
ehhif
lose their positions, or change them, without warning and at short notice. What if someone comes in as prime minister who's
less
tolerant than the
ehhif
holding the position now?"

"Please," Rhiow said. It was an uncomfortable enough situation as it was. "Our problem is that, whoever rules that world, the period is not one that likes to refrain from technology, once it gets its hands on it. The Victorians
like
technology, the more aggressive the better. They like mastering and dominating their world... and each other. They have done some great works that have lasted into our own time, it's true, but they also did a great deal of evil. They routinely acted without due consideration of the effects."

"I Saw a lot of things that looked like that," Arhu said, "with Odin. The
ehhif
took what they got from the book and mostly kept it for themselves. There are a lot of
ehhif
on this planet, in that time, but the ones with the technology weren't in a sharing mood. They wanted to keep themselves the top of the 'prides-of-prides.' Every now and then they would give a little of the information to some of the other prides, the 'countries,' as a present. A way to prove how powerful they were. But the best of it, the parts that really mattered, or were really dangerous, they kept to themselves." His ears were flat back. "It's like caching food. I don't understand how they can do that."

"It would probably be pretty foolish of us to expect them not to treat nuclear technology the way they treated all the others," Urruah said. "So... does that answer your question?"

Rhiow sighed. "I just hope Ith can get that spell working," she said.

And there's one other thing itching me where I can't scratch it,
Urruah said silently.
You shredded Fhrio's ears for him nicely. He's been behaving himself since. So why is that gate still acting up?

That question had been a flea in Rhiow's ear as well. She lashed her tail once or twice, and said,
I really hope we find out soon. Because if it
wasn't
him, it's probably someone else in our midst.

Urruah lashed his tail too, but had nothing to add.

They walked to the Forty-second Street entrance and looked out through the brass doors. Forty-second was in full flower, streams of traffic flowing by in both directions, and
ehhif
walking past, running, chatting, shouting, taking their time in the soft evening air. Rhiow glanced up leftward, a little over her shoulder, to see the light-accented, graceful curves of the Chrysler Building rearing up shining into the evening sky, the city light gilding it from underneath.
Even at the best of times,
she thought,
even when life seems normal, who among us can say with certainty that we'll see this world again tomorrow? Entropy stalks the world in all its usual shapes, and some less usual than others. I'll meet them, the strange and the deadly, but I don't need to crouch in fear or bristle at them in show of defiance. I know my job. My commission comes from Those Who Are. We stand together, They and I, in protection of the world They made and I keep. We may lose: there is always that chance. But meanwhile We keep watch at the borders, and contest the Lone One's passage. We will not let it be easy. We will not fall without selling ourselves dearly. And when in the worlds' evening we fall at last, and finally come home, We will find that we have brought with us what we love, bound to us forever by blood and intention: and the Lone One will stand with Its claws empty, and howl Her anger at the night. Then we will say, That was a good fight that we won: and come the dawn, We will make another world, and play the play again....