The Big Meow

Rhiow wanted to just lie down and cover her eyes with her tail. It’s such a tom thing to say. Yet splendid in its way. The spirit of Life hooking a claw in Death’s ear– And the wizardry is solid. What can I possibly say?

Except that it’s a better idea than anything I’ve come up with.

Even though I’m still not sure it’ll work —

“Urruah, I have to think about it for a little,” Rhiow said. “And take it to the Whisperer, obviously. But whatever we wind up doing, this threat has to be resolved and destroyed in this time. Otherwise it’ll simply propagate up the timeline into our world and execute all over again, as the earlier tablets warned. And not just through time, but through all the spaces and worlds that the One from Outside is able to affect when it comes through.”

“That is plain,” Ith said. “But we must choose our course of action quickly, get behind the choice, and enact it with one heart.” He looked at Rhiow. “I am more senior than you, perhaps, by what I’ve become since we first met. But seniority is not experience. What power my presence adds to this equation is useful, but I may have done all the good I can do simply by arriving. You are the most experienced of us on site. You have to decide what to do, and lead us.”

They were all looking at her, waiting: not a one of them disagreed with what Ith said. The pressure of it all came down on Rhiow as intolerably and inescapably as the darkness had in the cavern.

“I can’t decide,” Rhiow said, distraught. “I can’t decide right now, not after what we’ve been through. I’m a wreck. I have to sleep.”

“Sleep then,” Urruah said. “So will we: we’ve had a rough night. If this follows the timing data we have so far, we’ve got at least until nightfall. But then we’ve got to move.”

Rhiow tottered off in the direction of the Silent Man’s bedroom. Behind her, she heard Ith say to the Silent Man, “By the way – I have heard that a provision of great fame can be obtained here. Do you know of a place called Langer’s?”

There was a pause. Langer’s–? Oh, wait. You mean that new little deli down by Seventh and Alvorado? Sure, I know it.

“Then since the world may be about to end, while there is still time, let us go to investigate its pastrami.”

Rhiow rolled her eyes and pushed the bedroom door shut behind her.

She was afraid that by now she might have slipped into that state where sheer exhaustion leaves you desperate for sleep yet unable to achieve it. But this turned out not to be the case. No sooner had Rhiow curled up on the windowsill in the Silent Man’s bedroom than she fell straight into slumber as dark and total as if another cavern like the one behind Dagenham’s place had fallen on her. How long this happy state lasted, she couldn’t tell: but there came a moment when she was aware of lying on the floors of dream, and Rhiow realized that she wasn’t alone.

She opened one bleary eye in the darkness. “Hwaith,” she said, “please, of all times, not now…”

I am not Hwaith, the answer came back, sounding more than usually annoyed.

Rhiow bristled as she realized Who had invaded her slumbers. Slowly she sat up, yawned, and then deliberately threw one hind leg over her back and started washing right in the face of the Lone Power, giving her privates her best attention in the best insult she could summon at short notice. “You’re going to have the hide off me soon enough,” Rhiow said between sets of strokes, not bothering to look up. “I’d think you might let me sleep one last time without ruining even what good I can still get out of that.”

Sleep is not going to be an issue for any of us soon if you don’t take advantage of the chance laid before you, sa’Rraah said.

Oh, wonderful. Yet another temptation, right here on the threshold of the end of the worlds, Rhiow thought, annoyed at the Lone One’s eternal fixity. “What is it now?” she said. “Don’t I have enough problems without You poking your nose even further into my dish? What chance are you talking about?”

You have been very forward about assuming that you know what I have in mind as regards this whole situation, sa’Rraah said.

It was most unsettling to hear her in this mode, speaking as clearly as the Whisperer normally did. But at the moment it was the Whisperer who was being more than usually silent. Everything else is so topsy-turvy right now, Rhiow thought, why should this be any different? She licked her nose. “Daughter of the Queen,” she said, trying to be polite, but unable to resist using an epithet that would remind the one on the other side of the conversation exactly where her loyalties lay, “your motives have always been the same from aeon to aeon. What wisdom would there be in assuming you’d suddenly gone all distracted, like some kitten chasing a leaf in the wind, and had started doing good?”