The Big Meow

All around them, the brightening lights of Los Angeles lapped upwards toward the surrounding ridges, fading out into the faint speckling of the sparsely built-up hillside streets and then into complete darkness, with here and there a dark spot lacking any lights at all – virgin slopes not yet seen as useful for anything but the occasional theater or golf course. In the fading light of evening, the view across the ridges and canyons toward Cahuenga Peak with the sunset behind it was particularly lovely. The white of the sign that said HOLLYWOODLAND was clearly visible, in this lighting, despite all the dust kicked up in the air by the previous evening’s quakes.

Rhiow stood there for a while just looking at it, and watching the lights twinkle to life on the hillsides to westward. “Some days,” Hwaith said, “you can’t see that from here at all. A last glimpse…”

“You were right about the view from here, anyway,” Rhiow said. Reluctantly she turned away from it, looked at Urruah. “By my preference, I’d set up the gate right here on this entry lawn. I take it we’re past closing time now – “

“The last visitor-ehhif have just gone home. There are a few observatory staff, but Sif is going to make them feel like they want to leave. Maybe a little tremor to suggest there’s about to be an aftershock from last night.”

Urruah was paying this discussion no mind. He was looking behind them at the noble domed building with its white Deco columns, and his expression was distressed. “This is all wrong,” he said, “it’s just not fair – “

Rhiow looked at him in great bemusement. “What? What’s the matter?”

“Do you know,” Urruah said, sounding unusually mournful, “how many times this building’s been destroyed in ffihlm?”

“A lot,” Aufwi said.

“Yes. Aliens and monsters and Iau knows what else… It never occurred to me that I might be involved in doing something similar!”

“I know. Life,” Aufwi said, “it’s full of little surprises.”

Toms! Rhiow thought in near-desperation. “Cousins…” she said.

Urruah sighed. “The gate,” he said, and turned to get busy.

From around the corner of the building came Ith, with Arhu still riding on his head. “Everything’s clear up here,” Arhu said.

“Good,” Rhiow said. “’Ruah – “

From where Urruah stood, the spell circle that would contain the rerooted LA worldgate was flooding outward across the observatory’s lawn and walks to its full size, several hundred feet wide. As it manifested, Siffhah went over to the empty space prepared for her – now nearly twenty feet wide – and spoke the brief sentences in the Speech that activated the small dome-shield that would keep her and the claudication safe from whatever energies might assault them until they were needed.

Hwaith looked over at Aufwi. “Let’s go get the gate,” he said.

The two of them vanished. Ith came stalking over to Rhiow, who had been joined by Helen, and the three of them spent a few moments looking out over the hills, and the many little sparkling lights that spoke of human habitation. “They are going to see some terrible things tonight,” Ith said. “And leaving the strictly physical destruction aside, considering the fragility of human minds in the face of multidimensional phenomena, many of them may die of what they see…”

“I’ve done what I can about that,” Helen said. “I’ve spoken to my ikheya, and the powers of the Earth know what’s coming, especially after last night. The Elder Spirits of the Earth, the ikhareya, are awakening and putting forth their strength. A lot of people will feel the urge to go to bed early tonight. Many others who have to be awake will find their senses dulled and their interest in the sky or the hills minimal. It’s all that can be done for the people, at least before the fact. Afterwards, what we have to patch, we’ll patch. And as for the Earth itself… it’ll stay where it is the best it can: and we’ll help it.”

A few moments later Hwaith and Aufwi returned, transiting directly into one of the non-active parts of the spell circle. Between them hung the nonpatent gate, just a tall, narrow, shadowy veil of rippling force in this growing dusk.

“Right there – “ Hwaith said, indicating a container-circle near the center of the diagram. The two of them busied themselves tethering the gate into the language-recepticle prepared for it. A few moments later the borders of the gate sprang out clear and sharp as Hwaith touched one of the activator strands in the spell-circle with one paw and brought it online.

He stood studying its conformation for a few moments, watching the faint polychromatic light of a gate’s normal standby state run up and down the warp and weft of the hyperstrings woven into it. “Looks steady,” he said.

Aufwi walked around the gate and looked it up and down. “Agreed. Let’s do it.” He stepped into the circle and touched another of the control lines.