Rhiow turned and looked through the gate. Saash was standing there in her Old Downside guise, a tortoiseshell tigress momentarily glancing over her shoulder at the ancient world, the dawn coming up, its glitter and sheen on the hides of the saurians watching it for the first time. Then she turned, locked eyes with Rhiow, leapt through the gate—
The Downside body stripped away as she came, and Saash was surrounded and hidden in a swirl of— not light as such, but reconfiguration, self and soul shifting into some new shape. Not vanishing, please, Iau—
That swirling, shifting, faded. Saash stood there… but not in her old body, which seemed to have declined to continue any further. This new shape was one that no nonwizardly ehhif could have seen, and even an ehhif wizard might have had to work at it if the body's owner didn't wish to be seen. To Rhiow's eyes, she was still looking at Saash… but something subtle had happened to her; her physicality seemed to have been refined away, leaving her standing in the familiar delicate form, but now filled with forces that made Rhiow blink to look at them steadily. They were the forces with which Saash had always worked so well… and it was now obvious why, for they filled her the way light fills a window.
Saash shook herself, looked down at her flanks, and dulled down the glow by an effort of will. She turned then and smiled at Rhiow. Sorry, she said.
"For what?" Rhiow said softly.
Well… yeah. Oh, Rhi, there's a lot to do, I have to get going!
"Go on, then. Go well, Tenth-lifer— and give the Powers our best when you see Them."
Saash smiled, rubbed past Urruah, trailed her tail briefly over his back, took a friendly swipe at Arhu with one shining paw as she passed; saluted T'hom and Har'lh with a flirt of her tail; and walked off down the platform, glowing more faintly as she passed on— a wizard still, but one now in possession of much enhanced equipment, now reassigned to some more central and senior catchment area. Only once she paused. Rhiow stared, wondering—
Saash sat down on the platform and had one last good scratch. Then she washed the scratched-up fur down again, flirted her tail one last time, walked off into the darkness, and was gone….
* * *
T'hom came over to them then and hunkered down to greet them: Har'lh was with him. As she trotted over to them, it occurred to Rhiow that there was something odd about the track area: it looked cleaner, brighter, than usual. However, for the moment she put that aside. "Har'lh!" she said, and rubbed against him: possibly unprofessional behavior toward one's Advisory, but she was extremely glad to see him. "Where in Iau's name have you been?"
"About half a million lightyears away," Har'lh said with annoyance, "freezing my butt off on a planet covered a thousand miles deep with liquid methane. Somebody wanted me way out of the way while something happened here, that was plain. Met some nice people, though: they needed help with some local problems… I did a little troubleshooting. No point in wasting the trip." He looked at them all. "Now what's been going on here??"
"That'll take some telling," Rhiow said.
"Let's walk, then," T'hom said.
They headed out of the track areas, up into the main concourse. Arhu and Urruah looked up and around them as they went, and Urruah's tail was lashing in surprise. The Terminal looked satisfyingly solid and hard-edged again, much improved over the last time they had seen it, with multiple time-patches threatening to slide off the fabric of reality like a wet Band-Aid. Ehhif were going about their business as usual.
"Have they cleaned this place again in the last day or so?" Urruah said. "It looks so… bright, it's… no. It's not just the sun. I know this place always looks good in the morning, with the sun coming in the windows like that, but…"
T'hom smiled a little as they walked up past the waiting room and toward the Forty-second Street doors. "It won't often look this good, I think," he said. "This is how we knew you'd succeeded, down there, in some big way. All the manuals went crazy for a while, and all they would say was RECONFIGURATION, RECONFIGURATION, all over them. But then everything steadied down, and all the time-patching we'd been holding in place by force just hauled off and took, hard. Something of a relief."
They stepped out into the street, and Rhiow saw in more detail what T'hom meant, for the brilliance in the streets was more than sunlight. This was a city in unusual splendor: skyscrapers all around seemed consciously clothed in the fire of day, their glass molten or jeweled in the early sun; and down at the end of the block, the silver spear of the Chrysler Building upheld itself in the dawn like an emblem of victory, blinding. Everything hummed with the usual city sounds— traffic noise, oddly content with its lot for once, very little horn-honking going on. There was a peculiar sense of ehhif all about them being abruptly, and rather bemusedly, at peace with one another… for a little while. "The city's risen," Rhiow said, "as some of us rose. But it won't last."
"No. It's understandable that you would get some resonances from more central realities," Har'lh said, "some spillover… possibly even from Timeheart itself. You can't do that big a reconfiguration without some reflection in neighboring worlds: any of them directly connected by the catenary structure, anyway."
"It'll fade back to normal after a while," Arhu said. "It can't stay like this for long: you can conquer entropy only temporarily, on a local scale, She says… It never lasts. But while it lasts, enjoy it."
They walked down Forty-second Street, heading toward the river and the view of the Delacorte Fountain, a great silver plume of water rising up from the southernmost tip of Riker's Island in the morning sun. Rhiow started her debrief, knowing it was going to take a good while and might as well start now when everything was fresh in her mind. The only thing she knew she would have trouble explaining was how it had felt to have the One inside you. That knowledge, that power, had started to fade almost as soon as the experience proper was over. Just as well, I suppose, she thought. You can't pour the ocean into one water bowl….
The team and the two Advisories finally came up against the railing that looked down at FDR Drive and the East River. There the People sat down, and the Seniors leaned on the railing, and they went on talking for what Rhiow normally thought might have been hours: the sun didn't seem to be moving at its usual rate today… morning just kept lasting, shining down on a river that, more than usually, ran with light. In the middle of a technical discussion about what Saash had done to the catenary, T'hom suddenly looked up and said, "Well, they couldn't keep you down on the farm long, could they?"
"What is a 'farm'?" Ith said innocently, and leaned on the railing beside them, folding his claws and staring out over the shining water.
"Ahem," Rhiow said. "Har'lh, have you met our new wizard? Ith, this is Har'lh, he's the other Advisory for this area."
"I am on errantry, and I greet you," Ith said courteously, and bowed, sweeping his tail. Arhu ducked to let it go over his head.
"This is an errand?" T'hom said, with humor. "This is a junket."
"It is 'Research,' " Ith said cheerfully, glancing at Arhu with the conspiratorial expression of a youngster who's borrowed a friend's excuse. Arhu rolled his eyes, working to look innocent.
Rhiow wanted to snicker. It was a delightful change in Ith from the morose and somber individual they had first met; she suspected Arhu had had a lot to do with it, and would have much more.
"At any rate," Rhiow said to the two Advisories, "the worldgates are all fully functional again, and I don't think we need to fear any further interference from the Lone Power in that department. The Tree and the gate-tree, the master catenary structures, now have guardians who will never let the Lone One near them again. Some of them may not yet be plain about what It had in mind for them, but Ith will soon set them straight."
Ith turned his attention away from a passing barge and toward Rhiow and the team. "I am hearing more and more in my mind," Ith said, "of what the Powers will ask of us by way of guardianship. The requirements are not extreme. And little explanation will be needed as to why their pre
sent life is more desirable for my people than their former one. Hunger is something they are used to: until we distribute ourselves more widely, we will help one another cope with it… by more wholesome means than formerly. Meantime," and he glanced over at Rhiow, "I will need some help tailoring spells that will function on a large scale, with little maintenance, as sunblock." He grinned. "We have been down in the dark a long time."
They all looked out at the glowing water. "The dark…" Arhu said, looking down into water in which, for once, no trash bobbed. "I could never look at this before," he said to Rhiow. "But I can now. I won't mind seeing the river, even when it's back to normal. I could never stand going near it before: I was stuck on the Rock. But I don't think I have to be stuck here anymore."
"Of course not," Har'lh said. "Be plenty of demand for a hot young visionary-wizard all over the place. In other realities"— he glanced at Ith— "and offplanet as well. You're going to be busy for a while."
"I am," Arhu said. "Getting used to being in a team…" He glanced over at Rhiow.
Rhiow looked over at him affectionately and put her whiskers forward, smiling. "You're well met on the errand," she said.
They fell silent for a while, looking out at the light. The sense of power and potential beating around them in the air was as tangible as a pulse; for this little while, in this New York, anything was possible. Rhiow looked out into the glory of the transfigured morning— not quite that of Timeheart, but close enough— and said softly, only a little sadly, I had to tell you. The tuna wasn't all that bad….
She did not really expect an answer. But the walls between realities were thin this morning. From elsewhere came just the slightest hint of a purr… and somewhere, Hhuha smiled.
Rhiow blinked, then washed a little, for composure's sake.
She would head home soon. She would have to start drawing close to Iaehh now. He would be needing her, for there was no way Rhiow could tell him about anything she had seen or experienced… except by being who she now was.
Whoever that is… And if in the doing Rhiow brought with her a little of the sense of Hhuha— not as she was, of course, but Hhuha moved on into something more— that would possibly be some help.
It was so nice to know that ehhif had somewhere to go when they died.
For Rhiow's own part, she had had enough dying for one day.
* * *
The talk went on for a while more. Only slowly did Rhiow notice that the interior light was seeping out of things, leaving New York looking entirely more normal: the horns began to hoot in the distance again, and a few hundred yards down FDR Drive, there was a tinkle of glass as a car changing lanes sideswiped another one and broke off one of its wing mirrors. Tires screeched, voices yelled.
"Normalcy," Har'lh said, looking with amused irony at T'hom. "What we work for, I suppose. Speaking of work… I'm going to have to go make some phone calls. My boss is going to be annoyed that I took this time off without warning."
"Wizard's burden," Urruah said. "I feel sorry for you poor ehhif. Wouldn't it just be easier to tell him you were off adjusting somebody's gas giant?"
Har'lh gave Urruah a look, then grinned. "Might make an interesting change. Come on—" He looked over at T'hom. "Let's go catch a train."
The team walked the Advisories and Ith back to Grand Central, as far as the entrance to the subway station: it was not a place Rhiow chose to plunge into during rush hour while sidled, as you were likely to become subway-station pizza in short order. "Go well," she said to T'hom and Har'lh, as they went through the turnstiles.
We will, Har'lh said silently. You did….
Rhiow strolled back up to the main concourse level and put herself against a wall, where she could look out across the great expanse. Working properly again, she thought. With time, everything would. Someday, if things went right, the New York they had spent this long morning in would be the real one, and this one just a grubby, shabby memory. But meantime you make it work the best you can.
And meantime the scent in the air caught her attention.
Pizza…
The others came up out of the entrance to the subway, glanced across the concourse, and down at Rhiow. Ith in particular looked across at the Italian deli.
"Now, about that pastrami…" he said to Arhu.
Arhu grinned. "Let me show you a trick somebody taught me," he said, glancing over at Rhiow.
"I had a feeling you'd be sorry you showed him that one," Urruah said. "Ith, don't let him talk you into trying it. You'll make the papers."
" 'Papers'?"
Rhiow gave Urruah a look. "Come on, 'Ruah, let's leave them to it, and go do the rounds."
Rhiow and Urruah strolled off across their territory, weaving casually among the ehhif, up the cream marble of the Vanderbilt Avenue stairs, and out of the sight of wizards, and People, and anyone else who could see. No one noticed them, which was just as it should have been; and life in the city went on….
Afterword
ON HAUISSH
This occupation of the People, described only briefly in the literature by ehhif writers (the most reliable and perceptive is Pratchett*) has occasionally been called a pastime— but such a characterization is similar to calling soccer, baseball, and American-style football "pastimes"— for which human beings have sometimes wagered and won or lost fortunes, ignored almost all the other important aspects of their lives, and occasionally died under circumstances both comic and tragic.
An exhaustive analysis of hauissh would be far beyond the scope of this work, but it seems useful to include at least a summary explanation.
ITS ORIGINS
Hauissh is of such antiquity that it almost certainly predates the time at which felinity became self-aware. Its most basic structure implies a conflict over hunting territory between two prides, and most authorities agree that it evolved from this strictly survival-oriented behavior to a more structured but still violent dominance game between individual members of a single pride or (later) extended pride-community, with the loser usually being run off the pride's territory, or killed. (Even now the biggest predators tend to play hauissh in this mode, considering the refinements of later millennia to be oversophisticated or effete).
It would be as difficult to determine exactly when feline self-awareness arose as it would to fix a time at which hauissh began to develop beyond concerns of food, territory, and power into the more intellectual and entertainment-oriented version now played by cats the world over. All the families of the People seem to have at least some knowledge of the basic concepts of the game on an instinctive level. But the demands and challenges of the modern form of hauissh require a great deal more of the player than instinct alone will provide.
THE RULES
There is no mandated maximum number of players of hauissh, though games involving more than thirty or so players in one session are likely to be considered "inelegant." Most play involves no more than ten or twelve players, though, since some level of personal relationship is considered desirable among a majority of those playing.
Hauissh started out as a rough-and-ready, territorial-control game among the big cats, with the loser usually being run off the territory or killed.
Hauissh involves controlling a space— yard, sidewalk, field— with one's presence. This presence, called aahfaui, is not a constant, but is in turn affected by the space one is trying to control.
"Control" is defined by eius'hss, "being alone." The minute a player can see another cat, the control is diminished slightly, but not in such a way as to lower one's score. Control is diminished more if the other cat can in turn see the first player, and the first player's score suffers.
A successful position is one in which a cat can see several others, without himself being seen. The beginner would immediately think that this could be easily achieved by being down a hole but able to see several other cats, but such concealment is not considered gameplay in the rules, and a cat retreating to such a position, having previously b
een in play, is then considered out of it until once again exposed.
There are many other variables that affect play. Most important of these is eiu'heff, a variable expressing a combination of the nature and size of the space being controlled. Nearly as important is hruiss'aessa, the location of the "center" of the game, the (usually invisible) spot around which the game revolves, representing (in more abstruse thought about hauissh) the Tree under which the Great Cat took his stance against the Serpent on the night of the Battle for the World, the battle by the River of Fire. The ultimate point of the game is not necessarily to reach or occupy this spot, but to dominate or master it, while also dominating as many of the other players as possible. Feline nature being what it is, individual People tend to resist domination, even for the best of reasons; so it can easily be seen that any given bout of the Game will be prolonged and fairly stressful. Most play in hauissh is individual, "team" play being considered too difficult to maintain for long periods, and likely to cause what People call, in Ailurin, laeu'rh-sseihhah, an unhealthy shift in one's nature toward a "foreign" style of being (cf. the German word überfremdung, "overalienation")— "teamwork" being conceived as a distasteful kind of "pack" behavior better left to other less advanced species, such as houiff.
Play begins when a quorum of players are determined to have arrived and to be ready to start. It ends when one player is deemed to have successfully "dominated" the hruiss'aessa and a majority of other players. A single such sequence is a "passage," roughly equal to an inning in baseball. Passages are grouped together in larger groups called "sequences," but there are no fixed numbers of passages-per-sequence, or sequences-per-game. Consensus usually determines when another passage is required to fill out a sequence (and it almost always is).
A detailed or exact description of how scoring is done is beyond the scope of this work. Scoring hauissh fairly and to all players' satisfaction is difficult work, filled with imponderables, and much more an art than a science. It is nowhere near as clearcut as scoring in any sport with which humans are familiar (and frankly, if it were, cats would probably lose interest in the game almost immediately). There are so many rules and variables influencing score— for example, weather, local conditions such as traffic or the passage of ehhif or other species through play, physical condition of the players, and total time of play compared against time actually spent making moves, to name just a very few— and so many of the variables and requirements are mutually contradictory that scoring a bout at the end of a round or "passage" more closely resembles a discussion among Talmudic scholars than an umpire yelling "Yer out!"