The Big Meow

In the Silent Man’s living room, Rhiow looked over everyone’s work one last time before they left, while the Man himself sat at his desk and kept a theoretically casual eye on the proceedings.

Siffha’h’s work concerned Rhiow most, for a temporospatial claudication with so much energy and mass packed down in it needed careful watching: if anything caused it to come unwrapped, the result would be spectacular damage. But Siffha’h had been extra careful about the safeties that held the claudication shut, to the point where it would practically take a nuke to undo it without the right keywords in the Speech.

“Are you sure you know the passwords by heart?” Rhiow said to Sif as she collapsed the claudication down to a glowing spheroid about the size of a pea and levitated it into an invisible otherspace pocket.

Siffha’h rolled her eyes at Rhiow. “Yes, mother…”

This reaction at least was normal. Rhiow went to watch Urruah gather up the master gating circle and collapse it in turn, vanishing it into the workspace in the back of his mind as he glanced out into the back yard, where Arhu and Ith were getting ready to transit. “The kits are taking all this pretty calmly,” she said in his ear.

“Youth has its advantages,” Urruah said. “One of them being the belief that you can never die. Or the refusal to take the belief seriously.”

Aufwi came up behind Urruah. “I have my copy of the circle,” he said.

“Got mine too,” Hwaith said from the other side.

“Everybody’s checked all their personal data in all the copies?” Urruah said. “Long-version names and terminology only? Good. Don’t want any handling routines failing to execute because someone’s using abbreviations – “

“This is possibly a caution that we’ve heard before,” Aufwi said.

“About a thousand times…” said Hwaith.

“A thousand and one is good,” Urruah said. “Let’s shoot for a thousand and two.”

From down the hallway that led to the bedrooms came Helen Walks Softly, and the Silent Man’s eyes opened wide. Instead of that beat-up LAPD sweatshirt or anything by Elie Saab, Helen was wearing a two-piece midcalf dress of beautifully tanned deerskin, the sleeveless top of which was embroidered with bead designs of whale and orca and salmon. The skirt was ornamented with geometric lightningbolt designs in white and brown shell, as were the deerskin boots below. Helen’s hair was tied back into a long, long ponytail, her cheeks were streaked with red and white clay, and her arms ringed in white clay paint bands; her milkweed-linen and flicker-feather headband had a fan of black condor feathers angling up from the back of it, and in one hand she carried a pair of condor-feather reed wands.

The Silent Man looked her up and down and pursed his lips to whistle soundlessly. I didn’t know the end of the world was formal, he said. I’ll go get my tux.

Helen smiled at him and waved the wands at him in amused blessing.

Rhiow walked over to him and reared up to lean on his knee. “You’ve been very kind to us,” she said, “and so very flexible through all this….” She stopped then, for there was no point in saying much more. “Go well, cousin.”

He put down a hand to scratch her behind the ears. If this is it, Blackie, he said, all I can say is, it’s a better end than I’d been anticipating. The last couple of days have been a hell of a ride… and I’d sooner go out knowing what I do, than not knowing at all.

“If we’re lucky…” Arhu said, and then stopped.

Don’t say it, Patches. Just come back, and we’ll laugh about it later. He looked around at the People and Helen. All of you.

“From your mouth to the Spirit’s ear,” Helen said. “Rhiow?”

She flirted her tail “yes”.

They vanished as twilight fell.

The spot that Hwaith had chosen for them was at the end of a long drive that came up the top of Mount Hollywood on the north side. In the middle of the drive stood a high white granite obelisk with a base like a seven-pointed star, in the angles of which stood statues of six ehhif astronomers. On a white pedestal just south of that, a bronze sundial with a steel-strip gnomon pointed at the North Star. At the other end of the drive, facing the mountain’s south slope and set in the middle of a broad green lawn, was the Observatory itself, with its great central dome all sheathed in rectangular greened-copper plates, and the two smaller ones each down at the end of the east-and west-oriented wings. It was a gracious and handsome space, and Rhiow looked around it and wished she’d had time to see it before the events that were about to unfold.